In Brief
Kokkalis and 29 others cleared of gaming contract charges An Athens misdemeanors court yesterday found the chairman of the Intracom telecoms equipment and software firm, Socrates Kokkalis, the former managing director of the state gaming company OPAP, Christos Saleles, and 29 other people employed by the two companies innocent of the charges of breach of faith and dereliction of duty. The charges had been issued after allegations of a collusion of interests between the two groups and tailor-made tender procedures for the March 1999 contract between OPAP and Intracom’s gaming subsidiary Intralot regarding sports betting games. NBG board to propose re-election of Karatzas The National Bank of Greece’s board of directors yesterday decided to propose to shareholders the re-election of Governor Theodoros Karatzas and his deputy, Andreas Vranas, for a further three-year term. The bank’s annual general meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, April 24. The board also decided to propose electing businessmen Dimitris Daskalopoulos (Delta Holdings) and Vasilis Constantopoulos (Costa Mare) as members. Cyprus-EU Cyprus has achieved the highest degree of harmonization with the acquis communautaire among candidates for entry, after completing yesterday the 27th of 30 negotiating chapters. The three remaining chapters concern competition, agriculture and the budget. Bursa exhibition Businessmen interested in participating in a delegation of Thessaloniki’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry to a commercial exhibition in Bursa, Turkey, June 5-9, are invited to register by April 25. The event is of interest to firms active in the sectors of foodstuffs, food technology, industrial buildings and equipment, hotel and catering, textiles, plastics and metals-processing machinery and small vehicles. For more information, tel 0310.224.438. Eco-tourism The minutes of a conference on eco-tourism held by the National Greek Tourism Organization (GNTO) in Thessaloniki in November 2001 and a study on “Planning Pilot Activities for the Development of Ecological Tourism” carried out by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) Hellas may be obtained from GNTO’s Internet site www.eot.gr. Hellascom OTE Telecom subsidiary Hellascom has been assigned two infrastructure projects for mobile telephony services in FYROM and Armenia budgeted at a total of 70 million euros. Monti said the Commission’s decision to go after cartels and beef up the anti-cartel unit resulted in a record year last year in terms of cases decided and fines imposed. Ten cartel investigations were completed and a total of close to 2 billion euros in fines was slapped on 61 companies.
