NEWS

Fugitive grilled on gangland hit

A former henchman of an Athens crime clan all but wiped out during gang warfare in 2000-2002 was questioned by police yesterday in connection with Monday’s execution of an accountant linked with a rival underworld figure. Attica police yesterday afternoon arrested Giorgos Hadzopoulos, a convicted member of the Grigorakos gang of extortionists who had been on the run since August 25 when he failed to return to prison after a five-day furlough. Clan chief Vassilis Grigorakos and the eldest of his two sons were murdered in 2000, while the younger son was poisoned in prison a year and a half later. The Grigorakos family had blamed the deaths on Giorgos Tsakoyiannis, who has been charged with membership of an Athens protection gang that benefited from the Grigorakoses’ demise. On Monday, a presumed professional killer shot dead an accountant working for Tsakoyiannis’s brother, who bore a physical resemblance to his boss. This was a day after one of Vassilis Grigorakos’s two daughters was found dead – apparently of natural causes – in her car.

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