Deputy prosecutor sees no racketeering in case against soup kitchen founder

Polychronopoulos, and two of his relatives should be cleared of charges of racketeering and money laundering, a deputy prosecutor argued in a report on Tuesday after reviewing the evidence against the three defendants.

In a report to the judicial council that will decide whether there are grounds for additional charges on top of embezzlement and financial mismanagement, Giorgos Lainis argued that while there is evidence to indicate that Polychronopoulos may have gambled with money taken from accounts that were also used to collect donations from the public to fund the NGO’s soup kitchen, there is nothing to suggest that he or his family members – whose names were on three of the four accounts under scrutiny – were involved in some form of organized crime or attempting to launder ill-gotten gains.

He pointed to evidence of withdrawals and charges made between January 2020 and December 2023 for amounts ranging from 35,000 to 400,000 euros that went toward paying betting and gambling businesses, but added that Polychronopoulos also used the same accounts “to cover the expenses of the social kitchen and for regular activities and emergencies.” 

Kathimerini