Ex-soccer chief jailed for dodgy accounting
The controversial former owner of AEK soccer club, Makis Psomiadis, and two cousins were yesterday given four-year jail sentences by an Athens court for accepting fake invoices used to embezzle 11 million euros from the team. The court ruled that Psomiadis, a former nightclub impresario nicknamed «Big Mac,» had recorded in the club’s accounts several invoices for construction work at the AEK training ground that was never carried out. The club’s ex-financial manager, Filio Georgiou, was given a suspended 18-month sentence. Psomiadis’s sentence has not been suspended and cannot be bought out, the court said. Psomiadis, usually pictured holding a large cigar, was charged in May 2003 with siphoning 19 million euros out of AEK between July 2001 and January 2003. He was handed a 12-year term in October 2002 for forgery but was freed a week later after producing evidence he had tuberculosis.
