Self-professed billionaire savior changes tack
Self-proclaimed multi-billionaire and fugitive Artemis Sorras, who spent years encouraging austerity-weary Greeks not to pay their debts, appears to have done an about-turn, calling on his supporters to pay up.
The leader of the ultranationalist Convention of Greeks movement had claimed to have enough money to pay off Greece's entire public debt and had encouraged thousands of followers to tell their tax offices that their dues would be paid off by a 600-billion-euro bond he claimed to hold.
In a video posted online this week, however, Sorras called on his supporters to honor their debts themselves. “If you don’t pay, they will take your home, they will take your life,” he said.
Repaying your debts is the precondition for “crushing the beastly state.”
Last March, Sorras and his wife were convicted to eight years in jail for embezzlement. In December, a court on Crete started hearing a trial against Sorras and eight others on charges of distributing false information and inciting civil disobedience.