In the two years since the Tempi tragedy, “we have had a series of lies, which have affected society in a toxic way,” Justice Minister Giorgos Florides said in a statement.

Speaking on SKAI radio on Friday, he said first of all that “the lies started from the existence of 53 -allegedly- people, who boarded the passenger train in Larissa and had no tickets and therefore were missing and there were 53 missing people.”

“This turned out to be a lie. Then the next lie was that we had three wagons that disappeared. It turned out that nothing disappeared, second lie,” he added.

The third lie, the minister said, was that “there was a wagon, which was probably carrying – according to those who said that – the dangerous cargo, which disappeared and since it didn’t disappear, then it was vaporized, they couldn’t find it. The experts came from the relatives’ side and said that such a wagon never existed a third lie.”

He went on to say that “the fourth lie to be based on the theory of cover-up, because cover-up is not something abstract, you have to cover up something, you have to pursue something, don’t you?”

He also said, “So what was it that the government probably attempted to cover up in an extensive effort? It was a quantity of 25 tons of xylitol that was seized in Promahon, which 25 tons were auctioned off by customs, and – note here – the lie began, I was seeing it even in the last few days on the main news, on the channels, where some people there were saying it, that a ghost company took it and nobody knows what happened to this quantity that was possibly responsible, etc. Fourth lie.”

“And the other lie which the whole Greek society saw through headlines was that the discs given by the OSE which contained the conversations of the station masters etc. and the drivers etc. had been altered, 11 minutes had been removed, and therefore a montage was made. The expert opinion is awaited from the Directorate of Criminal Investigation on the remaining question of whether these did indeed come from the recorders that are at the particular points because that is the question that they are required to answer according to the investigator’s document that was made public. So, I’m going in for now… without any further comment that the experts say the judges say that this is the train that collided and that there is nothing on this train waiting to see what the Criminal Investigation Department will say,” he concluded.