Key scandal testimonies
As churches all over the country yesterday held vigils to pray for an end to the corruption and sex scandals bedeviling the Church of Greece, two key suspects are scheduled to testify today in connection with the trial-fixing allegations that opened a Pandora’s box of lurid claims regarding senior judges and churchmen. The first, Iakovos Yiossakis – a priest in detention pending trial for antiquities theft – was allegedly the eminence grise at the center of the ring, while the second, Court of First Instance President Evangelos Kaloussis, is suspected of having sexually exploited a series of immigrant women and to have banked vast sums that cannot be legitimately accounted for. The ongoing investigation into a series of judges and prosecutors suspected of corruption has already led to the opening of Kaloussis’s accounts in Greece which, according to judicial sources, point to the judge having received a large number of bribes. Kaloussis is also understood to have been implicated in further wrongdoing yesterday, during the testimony of yacht-rental entrepreneur Sotiris Kritikos, on one of whose yachts the judge has been photographed with another disgraced member of the judiciary, Constantina Bourboulia – sacked for her handling of a major stock-manipulation probe. Supreme Court deputy prosecutor Giorgos Sanidas has established, according to sources close to the investigation, that both Kaloussis and Bourboulia handled two serious cases – fuel smuggling and double manslaughter during a petrol station explosion – in which Kritikos was in the dock. In both instances, the businessman appears to have been treated with surprising leniency. Kaloussis is expected to face criminal charges later this week. Meanwhile, yesterday an Athens prosecutor brought misdemeanor charges against fugitive drug dealer Apostolos Vavilis – who has been linked with Archbishop Christodoulos in another aspect of the scandal – for forging documents identifying himself as a monk and renting an Athens flat under a false identity. Ahead of yesterday’s vigils, the Church of Greece, which has pledged to uproot corruption in its ranks, issued a circular accusing unnamed enemies of «trying to marginalize the Church, which is the spiritual mother and the covenant of our people.»
