On 6 April 2006, Bill Zikou, CEO of Ericsson Hellas, was ­summoned to give evidence before a ­parliamentary committee ­looking into the scandal. His company provided the telecommunications switching equipment that rogue programmers broke into.


Vodafone Greece CEO Giorgos Koronias ordered the removal of the surveillance program, because, as he explained in a February 2006 newspaper interview, “the company had to react immediately.” Removing the program is thought to have tipped off the perpetrators and helped them evade capture.


Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis was only the most notable of the 100 or so ­individuals illegally wiretapped, which, besides the country’s political, law enforcement, and military elite, included Karamanlis’s wife.


Costas Tsalikidis was found hanged, an apparent suicide, just before the Athens affair became public. As a telecommunications engineer in charge of network planning at Vodafone, he was ideally placed to be either an inside ­accomplice or discoverer of the digital break-in. But his ­involvement in the case has never been established.


Giorgos Voulgarakis ­was the first government official to whom Koronias disclosed the case. Giannis Angelou, the director of the Prime Minister’s political office, 
was also present.