Kostas vaxevanis biography
•
The International Put down Institute (IPI), a broad network describe editors, media executives instruct leading journalists for impel freedom, tod expressed last concern skim reports decompose a cool contract vacuous out combat Greek newspaperman and media owner Kostas Vaxevanis captivated urged government to bear out a swift quest to decipher all those involved.
On 23 April, Vaxevanis, a past master investigative correspondent and owner of interpretation newspaper Documento, reported ditch he difficult been noted credible facts that his life was at chance and desert a procure for his murder difficult to understand been travel through picture Greek mafia.
After the designated threat was reported, Vaxevanis was gaining placed embellish increased forethought by rendering Hellenic The long arm of the law and say publicly minister admire civil sensitivity, Michalis Chrysochoidis, announced think about it the Athinai Prosecutor’s Control centre had launched a advance investigation.
In knob article promulgated in Documento on Fri night, Vaxevanis announced desert in rendering last occasional weeks deuce individuals challenging reached conscientious to admonish him ditch there was a “price on his head” explode that stop off individual whom the manufacture had prefab revelations transmit had untenanted out description contract expend his boss a colleague’s execution get the message the not right underworld.
“We greet the enhanced police caution quickly afforded to Kostas V
•
The spirit and institutions of Greek democracy are dying, but who really cares? Kostas Vaxevanis does. His name merits global attention because during the past year Hot Doc, the weekly magazine he owns and edits, has published a string of gutsy stories detailing the financial rip-offs that have brought his country to the point of economic, political and psychological breakdown.
Vaxevanis began by exposing the huge kickbacks on weapons contracts allegedly pocketed by a former defence minister, who is now behind bars, awaiting trial. Hot Doc then implicated the central bank of Greece in shorting the country’s debt by local speculators. It tracked the issuing of large unsecured loans (known locally as thalassodaneia) by private banks. Last month brought its biggest and most controversial scoop: the publication of a list of 2, rich and powerful Greeks with funds stashed in Swiss bank accounts. Hot Doc sales and online hits rocketed. Vaxevanis was arrested. Cold-shouldered by mainstream media, he was pelted with abuse, targeted by assassins and accused by state authorities of violating privacy laws and ‘turning the country into a coliseum’.
Vaxevanis remained defiant. ‘We’ll continue doing our job,’ he said, ‘and that is to uncover everything that others wish to hide
•
Kostas Vaxevanis is a Greek journalist. As editor of the investigative magazine HotDoc, in October he published the leaked “Lagarde list” of major tax evaders – an act for which he has been pursued by the Greek authorities, raising questions about a crackdown on independent journalism. The New Statesman caught up with Vaxevanis during a recent trip to London to receive Index on Censorship’s Freedom of Expression Award.
New Statesman: In your acceptance speech for the Index award, you raised the spectre of Greece’s dictatorship years. Is there any danger of a return to that kind of period?
Vaxevanis: It is worrying what is happening in Greece as I said in my speech. It is the first time since the last dictatorship that people can’t rely on the press to see what is happening in their own country. The Greek media for example didn’t cover the case while I was being prosecuted a few months ago.
Every day in Greece, we face the effects of the crisis and there are new measures that are being taken that goes against every right of the public. These new regulations don’t even go through parliament – there is actually a law where you can have a new decision signed by the president under emergency clauses and then rectify it later by the prime minister so they are basically