It’s understandable for a company to be on edge when millions are at stake. Especially when the company comes from a country where it can easily impose silence.
However, when the Attorney General of our own country, where freedom of the press is – theoretically at least – guaranteed for many years, threatens journalists and their sources with seven years imprisonment, then the stakes are even higher.
Mr. Georgios Savvides became upset because colleagues were dealing with the case of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) receiving and regasification terminal in Vasilikos, the hundreds of millions it will cost, and the demands of the contracting company.
This was preceded by a letter from the company’s legal advisors, which was annoyed by publications around the issue. The company’s annoyance was shared by the Minister of Commerce in the Parliament that would deal with the issue, marked “confidential”.
And when the annoyance was not kept confidential, it was conveyed that this could lead to up to seven years of imprisonment. “Anyone who comes into possession of a classified document has no right to exercise personal judgment as to whether, in their opinion, it is confidential or not, and any transmission, retransmission, description, or reference to classified content is a criminal offence punishable by seven years’ imprisonment,” he said. (At least our former president simply said that we would be taken by the demon).
But half a century has passed since a world leader was forced to resign under the weight of a scandal that went down in history as Watergate, and if we learned anything from it, it’s that there will always be a “Deep Throat” and at least two journalists willing to investigate. And then, the authorities said the same thing: “It’s a matter of national security”.
Everything may be classified to prevent anyone from revealing their content, but the job of a journalist is not just to relay only what the authorities want to say. To a great extent, we have limited (for various reasons) journalism to statements.
What one said, what another replied. Convenient for everyone. However, often the essence lies in what some want to hide. In this specific case, the millions are hundreds of millions. And the only thing the Attorney General achieved with his threat was to create greater suspicion.
P.S. Anyway, the gas from the “Kronos 2” drilling is of excellent quality. And that’s not a secret. On the contrary, the Ministry of Energy wants us to know it.
