Revelations by the vice-President of the parliamentary committee on media and political financing, and ANEL MP Dimitris Kammenos that “an invisible hand” had tampered with the committee’s finding to present newspaper “Proto Thema” in a bad light, has caused a political storm, with Democratic Alignment MP Andreas Loverdos stating Wednesday morning that someone outside the committee had changed the document.

Speaking to Ant-1 TV, Mr. Loverdos said that while it had become abundantly clear during the committee’s proceedings that the resulting finding included a paragraph stressing the healthy state of the finances of Proto Thema and the sustainability of its performing loans, the specific paragraph was replaced on Monday with an excerpt attempting to revive an irrevocable court verdict that had definitively acquitted publisher of Proto Thema Themos Anastasiadis. “A person outside the committee, possibly someone from Maximos Hall swapped the initial paragraph”, he said.

He went on to says that the committee’s final conclusion was that the loans were performing.

Meanwhile, Notis Mitarakis, MP of major opposition party New Democracy (ND), Notis Mitarakis alleged in an interview to state broadcaster ERT that the whole proceedings of the committee were a “rigged”. He claimed the committee was being used by the government to intimidate banks and control the media, stressing that SYRIZA was attempting to “bully” Proto Thema.

ND in a statement has accused the government of adopting sneaky machinations to intervene in the committee’s finding regarding t political party and media financing.