Government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis has mounted a sharp political attack against former prime minister Alexis Tsipras over the country's record on tackling crime and corruption.
Marinakis accused the former leftist premier of behaving as though he emerged from political parthenogenesis without a track record of his own, after Tsipras questioned the current administration's crime prevention performance during a broadcast interview on Monday.
Responding to the remarks, the government spokesman publicly challenged Tsipras to attend a formal review on Tuesday outlining the operational results of the Directorate for Combating Organised Crime rather than casting doubt on institutional reforms.
The special police department, which faced persistent mocking from parliamentary opposition parties when it was created, had dismantled 259 criminal organisations and arrested 3,254 individuals, leading to 814 pre-trial detentions, according to Marinakis.
The Directorate for Combating Organised Crime functions as an elite investigative wing within the Hellenic Police. Modelled on international federal crime bureaus, the agency brings specialized units together to target racketeering, financial crime, and violent underworld syndicates operating across Greece.
Tax enforcement and penal reforms
Marinakis also defended the government's economic enforcement record, arguing that the conservative administration had spent seven years systematically reinforcing the Independent Authority for Public Revenue.
The tax watchdog carries out hundreds of thousands of audits every year, the spokesman said in comments carried by the Athens Macedonian News Agency. In 2024 and 2025 alone, inspectors completed more than 60,000 regular tax audits, assessing overdue taxes and penalties exceeding 5.2 billion euros.
The spokesman noted that the administration had revised the Greek penal code to increase punishments for major offences, imposing tougher sentences for leading a criminal organisation, bribery, premeditated murder, and other serious felonies.
The Independent Authority for Public Revenue operates as an autonomous public body tasked with collecting state revenue and curbing widespread tax evasion. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his New Democracy government have held office since 2019, making modernised tax auditing and judicial reforms key pillars of their domestic platform.
Clash over legal records
Turning his criticism directly against Tsipras, Marinakis insisted that the government had clear knowledge of what the former prime minister accomplished during his four and a half years in office.
Marinakis claimed Tsipras was too occupied with what he termed a shadow justice ministry operating inside the Maximos Mansion, citing public statements previously made by Tsipras's own former justice minister.
According to the spokesman, the previous leftist administration kept parliament open after calling general elections solely to push through penal code revisions that lowered sentences for heinous crimes, leading to earlier releases for convicted felons.
Tsipras led Greece from 2015 to 2019 as head of the Coalition of the Radical Left, known as Syriza, governing from the official prime ministerial residence at the Maximos Mansion. His administration passed a major overhaul of the Greek criminal code in June 2019 shortly before parliamentary elections, sparking intense political controversy over revisions to sentencing guidelines.
Golden Dawn and electoral bans
The verbal clash deepened when Marinakis condemned Tsipras for criticising the government's handling of far-right extremist groups, describing the former prime minister's comments as political brazenness that crossed every acceptable boundary.
Marinakis pointed out that Tsipras spent four and a half years in power failing to secure an adequate courtroom for the trial of Golden Dawn, the neo-Nazi party whose leadership was convicted of operating as a criminal organisation.
The spokesman added that Tsipras later declined to vote for government legislation that empowered the Areios Pagos, the Greek Supreme Court, to exclude individuals convicted of leading criminal organisations from standing in national elections.
Golden Dawn emerged from the political fringes during Greece's severe financial crisis, entering parliament before its members were charged over violent assaults, including the 2013 murder of anti-fascist musician Pavlos Fyssas. The marathon trial lasted over five years in a makeshift courtroom at Korydallos prison, culminating in landmark convictions in 2020. Parliament later passed legal barriers to prevent convicted leaders from fielding proxy parties in national elections.
Concluding his response, Marinakis remarked that while Tsipras might suffer from a selective memory, the Greek public had neither forgotten nor erased his historical record.
