An increasingly high-profile Russian-Greek investor briefly joined the vitriolic domestic political scene this week by comparing current Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to Vladimir Putin and claiming that the current main opposition leader "... will never be prime minister."
Ivan Savvidis' eyebrow-raising comments were carried in an interview posted by Proto Thema, Greece's best-selling weekly newspaper and a major internet news portal.
The statements come less than a week after a hastily tabled rider to a draft bill in Parliament was passed by a slim margin, resulting in the write-off 38 million euros in fines imposed on northern Greece cigarette-maker SEKAP, which Savvidis purchased in 2014. Days later came an announcement that an international consortium - which includes a company controlled by the previously Rostov-based entrepreneur - submitted the highest bid for a majority stake in the Thessaloniki Port Authority.
The fines on SEKAP had been imposed before Savvidis' purchase and over cigarette smuggling charges.
Among others, Savvidis said Tsipras' defence of the amendment in Parliament caused him to "want to stand up and applaud", before using the Putin analogy.
He also called on Greek voters to stand by the leftist prime minister, who he said was a condition for the country's future success.
Conversely, he was critical of center-right New Democracy (ND) party, its leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis and the lesser opposition PASOK parties, saying their positions bode ill for foreign investment in the bailout-dependent country.
But Savvidis went on attacking the main opposition party of New Democracy and its leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis personally, as well as PASOK. “”, he argued about Mr. Mitsotakis, accusing him that his stance drives international investors away from the country.
Even though Mitsotakis' ND party enjoys double-digit leads in all mainstream opinion polls, Savvidis forecast that he won't become prime minister.
The 58-year-old former tobacco company executive in the one-time Soviet Union, who is now based in Thessaloniki, also owns the city's popular PAOK football club and previously bid for a national television license in the current government's failed attempt to auction off licenses last year.
A former state Duma lawmaker in Russia, he concluded the interview by leaving open the prospect of purchasing one or more of Greece's near-bankrupt broadcast and print media companies, and even hinted at a political career in the east Mediterranean country.
