Greek shipowner, football club and media owner Vangelis Marinakis has been prosecuted with felony charges for drug trafficking, smuggling and financing a criminal organization, Greek and international media reported on Friday. 50-year-old tycoon Marinakis is among others owner of Greek football giant Olympiacos Piraeus FC and the co-owner of UK’s Nottingham Forest FC.
The indictment was submitted by the head of the Piraeus first instance courts, Irini Tziva, on Friday, with further instructions for an investigation into fuel smuggling and money laundering of criminal proceeds, notes naftemporiki.
Moreover, a supreme court prosecutor, Xeni Dimitriou, filed a request that the case to be assigned to a special magistrate for corruption.
The relevant indictment comes three years after police authorities and prosecutors began an investigation into the case of the Noor 1 freighter, which was intercepted off the port of Piraeus loaded two tonnes of heroin and 18 tonnes of illegal fuel oil in 2014.
Togo-flagged tanker Noor-1 was moored near the port of Elefsina in Western Attica.
986 kilos and 600 grams of heroin, wrapped in 138 plastic packages were so well hidden that even the dogs specialized in drugs were not able to locate it. The Noor 1 raid followed the discovery of one tonne of heroin two weeks earlier in a warehouse in Koropi, Attica, and a shipowner’s villa in the North suburbs of Athens.
According to guardian, the judicial inquiry had followed the money, focusing on bank transfers that had raised suspicion. Court sources were quoted as saying that several money transfers had been linked to the impounded vessel and probably used to finance it.
“All those charged are not allowed to leave the country,” daily Efimerida ton Syntakton mentions.
Short after Friday midnight, Vangelis Marinakis issued a statement and denied all charges saying said that he has “been targeted by the Government,” and the criminal prosecution against him is a “product of a plot” that has “nothing to do with the truth.”
“The plan has long been revealed. And it’s not just a provocative and repulsive plan, it is literally criminal. The rule of law is being abolished and democracy is undermined,” Marinakis said among others in his statement.
