NEWS

In Brief

PERMIT SCAM

Four arrested for selling residence papers to hundreds of migrants Three men and a woman were charged yesterday with using fake passports to obtain residence permits which they sold to some 500 migrants for 3,200 euros each, police said. The group consisted of a Greek, a Ukrainian, a Moldovan and a Georgian woman. The forged passports indicated that the holder had entered Greece before the end of 2004 and the documents were used to obtain residence permits. Officers said the gang was selling at least 15 permits a week to migrants for the last six months. Police are investigating whether any civil servants had been assisting the gang. KARADZIC DENIAL Roussopoulos dismisses story linking Bosnian Serb with a hideout in Greece A report that former Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is wanted for war crimes, had hidden in northern Greece with the help of Greek secret service agents is «totally unfounded,» Government Spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said yesterday. He said he contacted the Public Order Ministry about the report, which appeared in the Avriani newspaper, and was informed that it was a reworking of a story that had appeared in the publication in the past. DOCTOR RAPPED Suspended sentence for taking bribe A court in Piraeus yesterday handed a suspended 15-month jail sentence to a doctor at Nikaia Hospital after finding him guilty of accepting a bribe. The court heard that Theodoros Kotsifas had accepted 500 euros in marked bills from the relatives of an elderly women so he would operate on her. The doctor denied the charge, claiming the money had been given to him as a gift and that he was the victim of a «web of deceit» designed to prevent him from becoming the head of surgery at the hospital. Bank attack A homemade explosive device made of gas cannisters went off outside of a branch of ATEbank in Nea Smyrni, southeast Athens, early yesterday, causing minor damage, police said. No one was hurt in the attack. In a separate incident in Patissia, arsonists burnt and destroyed a CCTV camera used for monitoring traffic. Godmother murdered A 28-year-old man yesterday admitted to murdering his 80-year-old godmother before trying to kill himself, police said. Kyriaki Bei was found beaten to death in her apartment in Galatsi, near central Athens, yesterday afternoon. Officers noticed there were no signs of a forced entry at the property and nothing was missing. They contacted relatives and soon discovered the unnamed 28-year-old in Sotiria Hospital, suffering from a knife wound. He told officers that he had smoked hashish before visiting his godmother and began fighting with her. Cosmote e-mails Mobile phone company Cosmote warned computer users yesterday about e-mails being sent under the company name and calling on receivers to download software that will enable them to activate Cosmote services. The mobile phone operator said that it has nothing to do with the e-mails and that users should ignore the messages. Authorities have launched an investigation into the incident. Forest murder? The body of a 63-year-old man who likely died of a heart attack after someone tried to strangle him was found in the Seih-Sou Forest in Thessaloniki, police said yesterday. A coroner who examined the body of the unnamed man said that the victim suffered from serious heart problems and it was not clear whether he had died from a heart attack brought on by the shock of being strangled or whether his assailant actually strangled him. New KEP Deputy Interior Minister Apostolos Andreoulakos is scheduled to inaugurate today a new Citizen’s Information and Services Center (KEP) at the Halandri metro station. It is the first KEP center that will operate at a metro station. Bank fined The Hellenic Data Protection Authority (APPD) fined a bank yesterday 5,000 euros after a staff member gave out information to a third party about a businessman from records found on the credit rating system Tiresias. The bank involved was not named.

Subscribe to our Newsletters

Enter your information below to receive our weekly newsletters with the latest insights, opinion pieces and current events straight to your inbox.

By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.