Family charged with profiting from adoptions
Two officers of the police’s child protection department posed as a childless couple on Saturday to break a family ring they suspect of profiting from the illegal adoptions of foreign children. Glyfada businessman and town council member Vassileos Konidis, 56, his wife Sofia Athanasaki, 52, his daughter Anna Konidi, 26, and Georgian national Irene Kravchuk, 34, – who allegedly all worked at Konidis’s public relations firm «Glyfada: The Future» – will appear before a prosecutor today on charges of selling children from the former Soviet Union to prospective adoptive parents in Greece. Working on a tip-off, undercover police visited Konidis’s office to meet Kravchuk whom they arrested after she made out a receipt to them for 3,000 euros. She allegedly requested a 2-million-drachma fee and $10,000, ostensibly destined for the natural parents. The three relatives were arrested after a raid on Konidis’s home unearthed files containing 18 adoption application documents, receipts establishing two deposits of 1 million drachmas each and computer disks containing adoption details. Konidis’s lawyer said the family was helping childless couples.
