Cops held for license forgery
A retired police brigadier and a serving traffic policeman have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in a gang that sold forged driving licenses to northern Greek motorists, authorities said yesterday. The two men, whose names were not made public, were detained by Ioannina security police detectives along with a third suspect, a female employee at the prefecture of Magnesia’s driving license-issuing department, and charged yesterday with forgery. A Ioannina prosecutor also pressed charges against two people from the mountain village of Anilio, near Metsovo – where the traffic policeman was stationed – for allegedly paying the gang to provide them with forged licenses. Police said one of the gang’s two clients had paid 1,614 euros for the document. Recent changes in the driving test system – which now includes an obligatory course of theoretical and practical lessons with a driving instructor – have pushed up the cost of legitimately acquiring a driver’s license to around 1,000 euros.
