The prosecutor’s closing argument in the trial of the former protected witnesses in the Novartis case constitutes a dangerous institutional deviation from the very notion of the rule of law.
Her core argument was that the witnesses failed to present evidence for their testimony—testimony concerning bribery, black money, and under-the-table transactions. In essence, the judiciary is demanding that a corruption whistleblower possess proof of acts that, by definition, leave no lawful trace.
If this logic prevails, the message is clear:
anyone who witnesses corruption must either remain silent or ask the corrupt actors for a receipt.
Particularly revealing is the contradiction the prosecutor herself acknowledged: in the United States, the same witnesses were deemed credible, while in Greece they were not. There, Novartis was convicted and paid hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties. Here, politicians were left untouched, prosecutors were prosecuted, and witnesses ended up in the dock.
Demanding “hard evidence” from insider witnesses does not protect justice. It protects corruption. And it turns the rule of law into a rule of silence.
Diotima:
The Trial of the Prosecutor’s Logic
The central issue is not whether the Novartis witnesses possessed bank statements or invoices.
The real question is what a rule-of-law state expects from a corruption witness.
The prosecutor’s reasoning shifts the entire burden away from organized power structures and onto the weakest link: the employee, the insider, the witness—who by definition cannot possess “legal proof” of illegal acts.
This inversion sends a chilling institutional message:
“Speak without documents and you will be punished.”
Such logic does not belong to a mature rule-of-law system. It belongs to systems that prefer corruption to exposure.
When the prosecutor states that the witnesses were credible in the United States but not in Greece, she unintentionally admits the truth: the problem is not the witnesses, but the institutional filter through which their testimony is judged.
In the U.S., Novartis was convicted based largely on insider testimony. In Greece, those testimonies led not to accountability but to retaliation.
A witness does not speak lightly. A protected witness speaks with fear, risk, and personal cost. When justice questions that courage while leaving untouched the system that benefited, it ceases to deliver justice and begins to enforce silence.
