ATHENS – While the New Democracy government denied audio files from the 2023 head-on train crash in Tempe which killed 57 had been tampered with, five managers at the state-run OSE railways agency reportedly had access to them.

They weren’t named but Kathimerini said it was told by executives of the Hellenic Railways Organisation, without identifying the sources, got their hands on the tapes hours after the tragedy.

They included talks between the stationmaster at Larissa who, along with a handful of railways officials has been charged, and the drivers of a cargo and passenger train that collided just outside a tunnel, the toll likely to be higher if the crash happened inside.

It hasn’t been revealed what was on the tapes as the investigation has been kept secret by the government and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) said the government is obstructing its probe and wants immunity of ministers and lawmakers lifted.

OSE also knows the identity of the employee who extracted the files from the company server and the exact time he uploaded it to a hard disk, the same sources said, but an internal investigation didn’t say which of the five people leaked a tampered version to the press, just hours after the accident.

The sources said that an OSE employee at the organization’s headquarters entered the server room on orders of his supervisors, downloaded the files onto a hard drive and gave them to his boss who emailed them to three senior managers on a zip file.

That same day, two audio files from the transmissions of the stationmaster were published on the Proto Thema news website and the newspaper To Vima recently said they were tampered with but the government said they weren’t.

Some of the recipients of the emails containing the audio files claim they first heard the conversations on the radio while traveling back from the accident but an alleged investigation followed but didn’t name any of those involved.

The complete audio files were handed over to the police on March 3, according to the Hellenic Police but it wasn’t said if they were tampered with although rival parties said the tapes jibed with the government’s story.

The OSE workers’ union had filed a complaint with a prosecutor over the leaks to the press but sources indicate that nothing has happened since although a judicial investigation is said to be going on as well.

OSE chief Panagiotis Terezakis gave a parliamentary panel controlled by government lawmakers a different version altogether, the tragedy producing a series of contradictory stories and accusations flying around.

He reportedly said that he and a police officer, not an OSE worker, took the audio files and gave them to the traffic police in Larissa, the city closest to the scene of the accident and where the stationmaster on duty for only a few days with little training was posted.

After questions rose about whether the tapes were altered, presumably to protect the government, sources close to Terezakis said the files he took weren’t from the stationmaster’s transmissions but those containing electronic signaling data.

The discrepancies were attributed to a mistake during the deposition, the newspaper said, although it wasn’t explained how such an obvious mix-up had occurred or if, as government critics and families of the victims had said, a coverup is going on.

The signaling files were allegedly recorded by a police officer with his mobile phone and a delivery and receipt of the files also bears the signature of a representative of the TOMI-Alstom consortium responsible for implementing the undelivered remote signaling and railway control projects.