SPORTS

Relegation threat for five Super League sides

The threat of relegation is hanging over clubs involved in the match-fixing scandal, according to soccer prosecutor Andreas Fakos, with at least five Super League clubs implicated in the case, including champion Olympiakos.

Fakos told radio station Sentra FM on June 24 that there are two crimes that concern sports justice, and they are bribery and betting. «If the clubs are implicated, then the law provides for relegation,» he stated.

Fakos added that he is expecting a copy of the case documents in order to decide who will be summoned and charged as far as the sports side of the scandal is concerned.

The clubs implicated to date in the scandal with incriminating evidence according to the prosecutor’s report are Olympiakos Piraeus, Olympiakos Volou, Kavala, Kerkyra and Asteras Tripolis from the Super League, as well as more than half of the second-division teams and several from the third.

Olympiakos and Super League president Vangelis Marinakis, who is charged with participating in a criminal gang and assisting with serial bribery, stated on June 24 that the case does not concern him or the club.

“The same propaganda networks that started a war against Olympiakos last February are continuing their war against us now,» Marinakis stated during the presentation of Olympiakos’s new signing, Ljubomir Fejsa.

Marinakis and the other 67 people listed by the prosecutor as involved in the case have been forbidden from leaving the country.

Meanwhile the Hellenic Football Federation (EPO) decided on the same day to sack Yiannis Papadopoulos, an EPO employee who is among the five men whom police have issued arrest warrants for.

EPO also decided to suspend five referees for their alleged involvement, while it is said that Olympiakos defender Avraam Papadopoulos and Under-21 national coach Giorgos Georgiadis have no future in the national teams anymore.

Sources also revealed to Kathimerini that there is a network of offshore companies in the Far East, with at least one of them based in Malaysia, which conducted the laundering of profits from the illegal betting on the fixed matches.

The prosecuting authorities are following the money trail, which became evident from recorded conversations, but cooperation with Malaysian justice is not easy given the absence of a protocol of judicial cooperation between the two countries.

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