Former defense minister and a one-time stalwart of the PASOK Socialist Akis Tsochatzopoulos, who is in detention and already sentenced to eight years for failing to declare his wealth, was back in court on March 8 along with 18 other co-defendants facing charges of corruption.
Authorities said the group was involved in an elaborate scheme to launder bribes from defense constracts when Tsochatzopoulos was the defense chief in the late 1990’s and early into the last decade.
Also appearing in court was his wife, Viki Stamati. The mansion under the Acropolis the pair was said to have bought with illicit funds was seized by the government.
Council of Appeals court judges ruled that 19 out of a total of 21 suspects should be tried, the newspaper Kathimerini reported. In their 1,000-page report, the judges said there was not enough evidence to prosecute Stamati’s aunt and Eftichios Atsopardis, the legal representative of one of the offshore companies that was allegedly used to launder the slush money.
Apart from Tsochatzopoulos and Stamati, those who will stand trial are: Asterios Economidis, Efrosini Lambropoulou, Nikos Zigras, Giorgos Sachpatzidis, Areti Tsochatzopoulou (the ex-minister’s daughter), Yiannis Sbokos, Nikos Georgoulakis, Panayiotis Stamatis, Pantelis Zachariadis, Oratios Melas, Constantinos Antoniadis, Spyros Chatzinikolaou, Gudrun Moldenhauer (Tsochatzopoulos’s first wife), Fotis Arvanitidis, Nikos Karatzas and Giorgos Konstantatos. Eight of the suspects have been in pretrial custody since last year.
The case is likely to be heard in a Greek in Athens next month, sources told the newspaper. The 19 are accused of being involved in the process of accepting bribes, laundering the money through offshore firms and then using it to buy property and other assets.
Besides losing his mansion, Tsochatzopoulos has had 23 other properties belonging to him and his relatives and said to have taxable value of 18.5 million euros ($24 million) confiscated by the state although their market value was said to be many times higher.
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