Yanis Varoufakis, a former Greek finance minister, is far from being the first politician to admit to decades-old experimentation with illegal drugs. But the admission earned him a rare distinction, his political party said on Wednesday: He is being prosecuted.
Mr. Varoufakis, a famously outspoken left-wing economist, author and critic of Greece’s conservative government, was charged with “promoting and advertising drugs,” according to his party, known as MeRA25, or the European Realistic Disobedience Front.
Greek prosecutors, who rarely comment on such actions, could not be reached on Wednesday evening. Mr. Varoufakis, himself, did not respond to a request for comment.
“The idea of putting the leader of a political party on trial for referring to his experiences with substances decades ago is not a random or innocent mistake,” MeRA25 said in a statement. “It is the message of a justice system that turns a blind eye to power while targeting anyone who refuses to bow before it.”
In early January, on a podcast organized by young people to address Gen Z concerns, Mr. Varoufakis was asked if he had ever used drugs, according to a social media post he wrote a couple of weeks later. “Determined not to do a Bill Clinton (remember the laughable ‘I didn’t inhale’?), I said I had,” he wrote in the post.
“Apart from pot,” he wrote, he said he had tried ecstasy once, 36 years ago, in Australia. He said he told the truth, but only as a prelude to a warning about the risks of addiction.
He said he had one initially pleasant experience and “danced for 16 hours effortlessly,” which was followed by a weeklong migraine, and he never used ecstasy again. “That was my introduction to making the point that, however pleasant drug taking may seem, there is a price to pay,” Mr. Varoufakis said. He had “emphatically” warned that drug dependence meant “the end of liberty,” he added.
He wrote that he made the post after drug enforcement agents summoned him for questioning about his comments.
“At a time of war, genocide, stupendous exploitation and so on, my little trouble with the inane Greek police is neither here nor there,” he wrote last month. But he said it was nonetheless “important” insofar as it showed liberties are increasingly being infringed.
“Here, in Europe, many people still live under the illusion that we have liberty, rationality and freedom,” he said. “We don’t.”
MeRA25 called the case against him “yet another episode” showing the governing New Democracy party’s manipulation of the Greek justice system and its turn toward fascism.
Mr. Varoufakis, 64, served briefly as finance minister in 2015, in the left-wing government of the Coalition of the Radical Left Progressive Alliance, or SYRIZA, that was trying to solve a crippling financial crisis. He resigned under pressure after comparing the country’s creditors to terrorists and igniting the ire of European leaders.
His party said he is scheduled to stand trial in December.
Ephrat Livni is a Times reporter covering breaking news around the world. She is based in Washington.
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