Former prime minister Constantine Mitsotakis and the former Synaspismos Left Coalition leader Nikos Constantopoulos said yesterday that they will take legal action against television journalist Makis Triandafyllopoulos, on whose show a former employee of the Kathimerini group. claimed that the two men received money from publisher Aristides Alafouzos between 1989 and 1993. A court found that the money was donated to New Democracy when Mitsotakis was leader. Constantopoulos, a prominent lawyer who provided legal counsel to Alafouzos, discussed the issue with Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis yesterday.

Entangled interests...

Social Security Foundation (IKA) employees are to stage two 48-hour strikes, one starting tomorrow and one starting on December 12, calling for more staff. IKA President Vassilis Kokkalis yesterday criticized a new draft bill that foresees the discounting of employers’ income-tax debts, stressing that a more effective way to crack down on income tax evasion would be recruiting some 3,500 extra staff to IKA. Meanwhile, the country’s main labor union, GSEE, has called a 24-hour strike for December 13, demanding job security for contract workers and for the government to fulfill pre-election pledges to other workers.

An 18-year-old boy was stabbed six times in the chest by his father after the two quarreled in Serres, northern Greece, police said yesterday. The father, who is believed to be an alcoholic, stabbed his son while he was sleeping. Doctors said the teenager was not in a critical condition.

Citizens of the Athenian district of Ambelokipi yesterday protested local authorities’ plans to construct a multistory building in close proximity to a local Byzantine church. But authorities at City Hall claim to have received the necessary permits from the Culture Ministry to construct the block behind the former Panathinaikos soccer stadium. Residents complain that the building would virtually eclipse the church from view and destroy antiquities on the site.

A 32-year-old suspect who was accused of shooting dead his neighbor last week in Hania, Crete, has been remanded in custody, police said yesterday. Ilias Papasifakis, aged 45, was found dead on his farm with three gunshot wounds. The unnamed suspect has been charged with murder and illegal possession and usage of a weapon.

Police said yesterday that they had detained 12 migrants and arrested two suspected traffickers after stopping four cars on the Xanthi-Kavala national road in northern Greece on Saturday. Officers said that they are looking for another two men who were driving two of the cars but managed to evade arrest. Authorities also want to track down a 35-year-old foreign man in Athens who was going to take in the migrants. Officers said that traffickers are increasingly using cars to transport illegal immigrants as searches of trucks have been stepped up.

Unidentified robbers early on Sunday raided the offices of the City of Athens’s welfare department in Kallithea, removing several computers, police said yesterday. The thieves did not remove any official stamps or documents, officers said.

A criminal ring believed to have been trading in knockoff designer clothing has been broken up, police in Palaio Faliron said yesterday, following a raid on a warehouse in the coastal district and the arrest of a Turkish national. Officers confiscated 7,700 items of bootleg designer clothing, mostly women’s bags, followed by shoes, pants, shirts and boots.

Border guards arrested a Greek man near Lake Delvinaki in northwestern Greece on suspicion of smuggling drugs into the country, authorities said yesterday. The unnamed man, from Halandri in northern Athens, was caught loading drugs into a van on a dirt road beside the lake near the border with Albania. Officers found some 73 kilos of cannabis in the vehicle.