Greek probes into football hooliganism find links to drugs, extortion and arson

ATHENS – When a police officer died after clashes with hooligans outside a women’s volleyball match in Athens in December 2023, authorities vowed to end the violence and criminality that have plagued Greek sport for decades.

Police launched probes into the hooliganism that killed Giorgos Lyggeridis and that had moved beyond football stadiums, but also into links between some violent fans and criminal gangs.

These links, they believed, were ramping up the aggression.

While the vast majority of sports fans in Greece are peaceful, evidence collected by police alleges hardcore fans, who follow their clubs across different sports, were involved in smuggling drugs, or linked to gangs extorting protection money from businesses and arson.

“(The gangs) used sports as an alibi,” Sports Minister Ioannis Vroutsis said. “They used clubs as a cover for their illegal acts.”

Police have made dozens of arrests, with the latest coming on June 16.

The fan groups’ hierarchies and discipline “offered the conditions for criminal organisations to thrive within them”, Supreme Court prosecutor Georgia Adeilini has said.

Police officials said gangs can emerge within fan groups or infiltrate them to sell drugs, or seek new recruits.

On Dec 7, 2023, some fans of Olympiakos football club moved a bag of flares and makeshift explosives from a storage room at their stadium to the venue for a women’s volleyball derby against Panathinaikos.

“We’ll kill you!” the crowd shouted, according to prosecutors, during an attack on police that led to the fatal injury of Lyggeridis, who was hit by a flare. 

In May, a Greek court convicted a 20-year-old Olympiakos fan of manslaughter and gave him a life sentence. 

Lyggeridis’ mother Evgenia Stratou said her policeman son never expected to be in such danger.

“That day, it wasn’t that simple. They were organised, coordinated,” she said.

In a separate investigation, dozens of Olympiakos fans have been charged with setting up a gang, extorting street vendors, possessing weapons and orchestrating assaults. They have denied wrongdoing.

The team’s official fan club Gate 7 has condemned the attack and said it has never incited violence.

The investigation extended to the top echelons of the club and Evangelos Marinakis, owner of Olympiakos and Nottingham Forest, is set to stand trial in the coming months with four board members.

They face misdemeanour charges related to inciting sports-related violence and of abetting a criminal group. Marinakis’ lawyers declined to comment on the case but have called the accusations completely baseless.

Gate 7 member Akis Vardalakis, 58, called the case a government witch-hunt. But he noted a rise in aggression around sport.

“Sports fandom is a mirror of society,” he said.

In July 2024, police dismantled a ring extorting protection money from at least 76 Athens restaurants and nightclubs. The gang was also hired by Panathinaikos fans to attack fellow team fans in a war for control, police allege in the documents.

Panathinaikos’ only legal fan club Palefip condemns all violence and vets new members, its president Gerasimos Menegatos insisted.

In December 2024, police dismantled a gang that imported cocaine and cannabis from Spain. Among core members were allegedly fans of AEK Athens previously involved in violence and robberies, the documents stated.

In 2020-2021 alone, the group imported about 1.4 tonnes of cannabis and 30kg of cocaine.

George Katsadimas, a legal representative for AEK’s fan club, said the case did not concern the fan club but involved a few individuals who also support the team.

The legal fan club insists its members are not involved in any illegal activity.

In May, police arrested 24 people, allegedly fans of Paok, accused of selling drugs at matches. 

Greece’s judicial system has several preparatory stages and the compilation of charges does not necessarily mean an individual will face trial.

Older fans said they noticed a rise in aggression since the 2009-2018 debt crisis that left a young generation without work and with little prospects.

“Sports fandom has always been a hybrid space,” said Anastassia Tsoukala, a security and sports violence analyst and former associate professor of criminology.

A young person can develop other affiliations within a group of fans, and may be pushed into crime in the desire to belong more deeply to a group, climb its hierarchy and make a living, she said.

Greece in recent years cut the number of legal fan groups from dozens to just eight, increased stadium security and toughened penalties for clubs and sentences for hooliganism.

Since February 2024, some 100 matches have been played behind closed doors and authorities imposed fines worth about €1 million (S$1.5 million) on clubs, according to government sources. 

Police also monitor around 300 “high-risk” hardcore fans in each major club, a police source said.

Minister Vroutsis said reforms have been successful, while analysts argue brawls have merely shifted beyond the football stadiums. Police data shows 700 cases of sports-related crime annually. Critics and victims of the violence say more needs to be done.

Among those campaigning for change is Aristides Kampanos, who went into politics after his son Alkis was stabbed to death in February 2022 in Thessaloniki.

“The clean-up I want is not just a job for the state. We must all participate, including club presidents and fan clubs,” Kampanos said. REUTERS