A former justice minister in the previous SYRIZA government testified for nearly two hours on Wednesday before an Athens prosecutor after first referring to a "devious acceleration" of the the process to revise Greece's criminal justice code days before the July 2019 - which leftist SYRIZA lost in a landslide.
Stavros Kontonis, who has since distanced himself from the party since the summer of 2019, had also charged that the revision was undertaken so that "certain people would benefit from a downgrade of the offense of bribery from a felony to a misdemeanor".
According to press reports that circulated almost immediately with the end of Kontonis' testimony, the former minister cited a specific case before the justice system and a series of events he was privy to during his ministerial tenure.
In an angry response, main opposition SYRIZA referred to "nonsense" on its part of its former minister, and referred to Kontonis' address before Parliament at the time to support the proposed changes to the penal code, where he referred to articles that "will should make us proud".
