GREECE
Kathimerini
As churches all over the country yesterday held vigils to pray for an end to the corruption and sex scandals bedeviling the Church of Greece, two key suspects are scheduled to testify today in connection with the trial-fixing allegations that opened a Pandora’s box of lurid claims regarding senior judges and churchmen.
The first, Iakovos Yiossakis — a priest in detention pending trial for antiquities theft — was allegedly the eminence grise at the center of the ring, while the second, Court of First Instance President Evangelos Kaloussis, is suspected of having sexually exploited a series of immigrant women and to have banked vast sums that cannot be legitimately accounted for.
The ongoing investigation into a series of judges and prosecutors suspected of corruption has already led to the opening of Kaloussis’s accounts in Greece which, according to judicial sources, point to the judge having received a large number of bribes.
Kaloussis is also understood to have been implicated in further wrongdoing yesterday, during the testimony of yacht-rental entrepreneur Sotiris Kritikos, on one of whose yachts the judge has been photographed with another disgraced member of the judiciary, Constantina Bourboulia — sacked for her handling of a major stock-manipulation probe.
Posted by kshaw at March 9, 2005 06:05 AM