ATHENS – The top prosecutor for Greece’s Supreme Court, Vasilis Pliotas, has ordered an investigation of an audio file that seems to show a mediary for the court’s former chief seeking a bribe from a prominent businessman.

That purportedly implicated the court’s former president, Vassiliki Thanou wanting a payoff from Andreas Vgenopoulos, who led the former Marfin Bank before he died in 2016.

Pliotos instruced his deputy to examine the audio to determine whether the case should be restarted after the original allegation from Vgenopoulos that he was being squeezed for money had been looked into and shelved.

Thanou – who went on to serve the former ruling Radical Left SYRIZA – denounced it, but the report on the site iefimerida.gr led the high court prosecutor to look again at a 2016 case in which she said an investigation was set aside.

She said she may sue for slander as the incident set off a firestorm in political circles because it involves so many prominent names.

The audio file is a recorded conversation between Vgenopoulos and businesswoman Dimitra Maratou, who said she was acting on behalf of Thanou and seems to be asking for money, using the terms “books” and “libraries” instead.