The Anti-Corruption Authority resorted to the oldest trick in the book in its announcement, responding to the previous week’s media reports about a possible conflict of interest in the team of inspection officers investigating the allegations made in the book Mafia State. It avoided the issue, which was the claim that the head of the investigation, Australian lawyer Gabrielle McIntyre had previously worked with Leto Cariolou, the lawyer representing, the author of the book Makarios Drousiotis.

Media reports had said that Cariolou worked as a legal officer for the United Nations international residual mechanism for criminal tribunals and in this capacity had worked on the war crimes trials of Bosnian Serbs such as Radovan Karadzic. McIntyre had served as head legal counsel at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and of the international residual mechanism of criminal tribunals. Was there link or had the two lawyers never crossed paths?

If they had not, why had the Authority not clearly stated this in Friday’s statement? Instead, it said that it “examined the relevant allegations against Ms McIntyre and concluded that there was no issue whatsoever of conflict interest.” It also explained that “all inspection officers sign a ‘no conflict of interest’ statement that applies for the entire duration of the investigation.” And the matter was considered closed by the Authority, which passed the buck, saying that having delivered its report to the Attorney-General, its “work is completed.”

This sounds like a cop-out, especially by the president of the Authority, former judge Haris Poyadjis, whose official title is Transparency Commissioner. Did he consider this limited transparency adequate, especially after the public outcry about a Greek criminal investigator appointed by the council of ministers to investigate the conclusions of the report about Mafia State? One of the lawyers chosen, Christos Mylonopoulos, was replaced soon after his name was announced because of claims of conflict of interest – he had represented Michalis Zolotas, who was in charge of the shipping company Focus, which features prominently in Mafia State, during a case in 2016.

This is not the only issue on which the Authority has not been entirely transparent. It completely ignored questions about the employment status of McIntyre after May 2025, when she was appointed director of the secretariat of the assembly of states parties to the Rome Statute that was a full-time job. It was reported that she worked on the Mafia State investigation outside her work hours and received no payment. Are we seriously expected to believe that McIntyre worked on the investigation for another nine to 10 months without pay? We asked the Authority how she was remunerated but we received no answer.

It appears that for the Transparency Commissioner, transparency is not always the best policy.