Official denies report of Covid rules being bent for visiting athletes
Greece’s deputy minister for civil protection has denied a report that appeared in Efimerida ton Syntakton claiming that allowed a Turkish basketball delegation to bypass coronavirus safety protocols when entering the country last October.
In an announcement on Wednesday, Nikos Hardalias said that neither he nor any of his colleagues at the Civil Protection Agency had knowledge that four members of the delegation accompanying the Fenerbahce basketball team into Greece for a Euroleague match were allowed into the country even though they had possible symptoms of Covid-19.
He noted that the team arrived on a special charter flight and was subjected to all the required checks for entry into Greece, in accordance with Euroleague and FIBA protocols. These, he added, did not include a temperature check.
His agency’s only involvement, he said, was to allow the flight from Turkey during a travel ban.
Hardalias has also filed a lawsuit against the newspaper and asked for a judicial investigation to be conducted into the provenance of the report, calling on the writer and Efimerida ton Syntakton’s editor-in-chief to provide evidence backing the claims. [ANA-MPA]
