High-profile Greek shipowner Vangelis Marinakis appeared before an appellate level prosecutor on Wednesday to provide testimony regarding his lawsuit against a coast guard investigator, whom he claims is trying to maliciously link him an explosive heroin smuggling case in the country.
Marinakis, who also owns the popular Olympiacos Piraeus professional football club, charges that he's the target of a conspiracy that aims to blackmail him and block his commercial foray into the country’s ailing mass media sector.
The second generation 50-year-old shipping entrepreneur recently purchased a majority stake in the troubled Athens-based DOL press group, and by extension acquired a large percentage of shares of a company that owns a major nationwide television broadcaster (Mega).
The case involving nearly 2.5 tons of heroin seized aboard the small freighter Noor 1 two years ago at a port west of Athens has generated heightened press and judicial scrutiny, fueled by the fact that half a dozen people associated with the incident have been murdered or died under mysterious circumstances – most foreign nationals.
The controversial case generated a high-pitched political clash last week in Parliament when outspoken Defense Minister Panos Kammenos confirmed that he spoke a dozen times by cell phone with an inmate serving a life sentence for his role in smuggling the Noor 1 heroin shipment.
The opposition called for the convening of a Parliamentary fact-finding committee over the Kammenos incident, while the government, on its part, defended the minister, saying he was merely attempting to encourage the inmate to tell the whole truth.
Nevertheless, the convict, former shipping agent Makis Yiannousakis, later claimed he was being pressured by the coast guard officer, which Marinakis sued, to implicate the latter in the Noor 1 affair.
