Greek drug baron arrested a few days after release following prosecutor appeal
Convicted drug baron Alexandros Angelopoulos, the alleged mastermind behind a thwarted plan to ship 5.5 tons of cocaine to Spain aboard the Belize-flagged Africa 1 fishing trawler in 2004, was arrested in his home in Pieria, northern Greece, on Tuesday, just a few days after his release from prison.
Officers raided the home of the 51-year-old in the small town of Neoi Poroi, in Pieria, after a prosecutor objected to the Supreme Court over a decision to cut his prison term in half.
Known as the “Greek Escobar,” Angelopoulos, who had been serving a 22-year prison term, benefited from a law passed earlier this year by the previous government aimed at decongesting the country’s prisons and was freed after 11 years behind bars earlier this month.
Angelopoulos had initially received a life sentence before a Piraeus court reduced it to 22 years in 2011. A prosecutor had then expressed objections to the decision which had been based on the convict ostensibly having a clean prior record.
Besides being convicted for drug smuggling, Angelopoulos was also charged in four separate cases for embezzlement and money laundering.
In 2013, he received a 16-year prison term for laundering 36 million euros through sports betting game “Pame Stoichima,” managed by Greece’s gambling monopoly OPAP.
