Sudden change of deputy of the Greek National Intelligence Service

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The government is making a surprise change to the deputy commander of the National Intelligence Service, which is responsible for counterintelligence, domestic organized crime, terrorism and overseeing the secret services’ much-debated “legal surveillance” system.

The long-serving former deputy chief of staff of the army, 60-year-old Georgios Kellis, appointed to this position in January 2023, is leaving his post.

A former senior officer was appointed in his place ΕΛ.ΑΣ, as the Greek media say, “with success in the pursuit of organized crime in Thessaloniki”, Mr. Antonis Tsitzis, who resigned two years ago. This change seems to highlight the important role that “atypical” now plays in ΕΥΠ and the management of all Greek security matters in the absence of the Minister for Citizen Protection Michalis Chrysochoidis. This is despite the fact that control of ΕΥΠ still formally belongs to the Prime Minister’s Office.

According to some reports, Mr. Chrysochoidis recently met with the leadership of ΕΥΠ. Officials attributed the change to “the need for a more streamlined operation of ΕΥΠ, given the contributions and importance of Mr. Kellis.” However, there is another version of what is happening. The fact is that the United States is actively involved in the issue of Intellexa, which is considered the main developer of the spy program Predator. And as it became known, the other day unknown hackers opened the security system of this company and “stole” all data from their servers.

This means that the results of the surveillance of the opposition, ministers, businessmen, members of parliament and opposition leadership, which were collected over the past several years by the Greek National Intelligence, fell into the hands of foreign intelligence services (with the exception of the Israelis, who, as we believed from the very beginning, are the direct recipients of the information, given the “origin” of the Predator’s owner, the Israeli T. Dilian).

As a result, the recipients of the hack now own all Predator files and can blackmail the entire Greek (and apparently not only Greek) political and economic elite. This fact alone, coupled with the proven connection between the Prime Minister’s Office through ΕΥΠ and the direct control that Kyriakos Mitsotakis has by law means that certain people, either government agencies or private individuals who can buy this information, have the opportunity to direct political and economic events in the country at any time.

Naturally, the United States was concerned about this development of events. As it became known on March 5, The US Treasury announced sanctionsimposed on companies from the Intellexa “group” and two individuals involved in it, Tal Dillian and Sarah Hama.

They point out that all of this has been documented by investigative journalists, civil society groups and technology companies. However, everyone understands perfectly well that the United States was little concerned about the wiretapping of the Greek opposition or journalists, but they did not like the situation when US intelligence agencies caught ΕΥΠ wiretapping Greek businessmen during negotiations with American diplomats. The State Department reacted sharply to the fact that wiretapped American diplomats without notifying their overseas colleagues. Naturally, after the information from the Intellexa servers leaked to the side, this infuriated the Americans.

To put it in other words, everything that, using semi-legal and outright illegal methods, was collected by the Greek intelligence service ΕΥΠ, as well as the intelligence services of other countries EUwho used the Predator spyware became the property of one of the foreign countries – either Russia or China. This is the probable reason for the change of the Deputy Commander of the National Intelligence Service…

Apparently, replacing Georgios Kellis will not get by. As the famous Greek journalist noted Lefteris T. Charalambopoulos, The US has imposed sanctions on Grigoris Demetriades, the nephew and former secretary of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the man who is at the center of the relationship between Intellexa and the people who dealt with it here, namely Felix Bitsiou and Yiannis Lavranos (Dimitriadis’s best man), who business with the Greek government.

And this is already a serious wake-up call for Kyriakos Mitsotakis personally, who, faithfully following in the footsteps of the US Democratic Party, seems to have overestimated his invulnerability.

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