A political firestorm emanating from the deadly Mati wildfire, which erased a coastal settlement two years ago, erupted this week with the release of a tape recording of a former top fire brigade officer purportedly threatening and ordering a subordinate to "bury the probe" into the disaster.
The tape recording and its repercussions were the front-page story in the Sunday edition of "Kathimerini", with the fallout touching directly on the then leftist SYRIZA government in power, an ex-minister and the former regional governor of Attica prefecture.
More than 100 people died in the July 26 blaze, with scores seriously injured. The wildfire scorched the coastal Mati settlement in eastern Attica (east of Athens proper), where dozens of often illegally built vacation homes over the past decades stood next to pine trees and along narrow, meandering roads. Much of the coastal side of Mati bordered cliffs overlooked the southern Evoikos Gulf.
The tape recording is of two male voices, ostensibly then deputy fire brigade chief Vassilis Mattheopoulos and arson investigator Dimitris Liotsios. One man is heard telling the other to avoid attributing any blame or liability to official holders, characteristically saying "bury it", referring to the investigation that would be forwarded to a relevant prosecutor. Mattheopoulos was subsequently promoted to fire brigade chief by the Tsipras government after the catastrophic wildfire, which came a year before leftist SYRIZA lost the general election in a landslide.
Liotsios followed up on Monday by filing a lawsuit against his previous superior.
In one chilling segment, the voice that Liotsis claims is Mattheopoulos warns his subordinate of a possible demotion to a remote posting, while adding that this could be followed by lack of air support in case he faced a wildfire, claiming his occurred to out-of-favor fire brigade officers during blazes that erupted in southern-most Mani and the island of Kythira.
"...are you going to go up against the (local) forestry service (branch), they'll rip you a new one; are you going to go up against Dourou, she'll open your buttocks apart... Once we're accused, we'll put up three lawyers (up against you)...you'll be accused, accused, accused," according to the vulgar threat, with "Dourou" in this case being then Attica governor Rena Dourou, once a prominent SYRIZA office-holder who convincingly lost her seat to a conservative rival last year.
At another point, the male voice making the threats cites an "order" by the "minister", warning him "not to write anything...nor that any culpability lies with your superiors; the minister told me this, saying 'call him (Liotsios), and tell him: Don't write that the mayor or Dourou or anyone is at fault, or any service or the forestry service'."
The minister in this case, in Greek, uses the feminine version of the noun, meaning a female minister.
A day after the sensational front-page "Kathimerini" article, former citizen's protection minister Olga Gerovassili, who held the portfolio during the deadly wildfire, sent an extra-judicial petition to the paper demanding that it correct and retract the "slanderous, false, derogatory and, in all instances, illegal references" to her person, otherwise she would "proceed with the next steps", an indirect threat of legal action.
