Μake us preferred on Google Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has accepted the resignation of Deputy Development Minister Lazaros Tsavdaridis, after the explanations he offered about a personal matter were deemed insufficient.
The deputy minister found himself at the center of a political storm after reports revealed that his underage daughter had been added, on paper only, to the roster of Pylaia’s championship-winning junior women’s handball team. The move would have secured her the bonus points awarded to athletes in Greece’s national university entrance exams.
According to new accounts from parents that have since come to light, the deputy minister’s daughter never once trained with the team.
Parents allege that she would show up just minutes before games began, often after making a same-day trip from Athens to Thessaloniki, and would leave immediately afterward without spending a single second on the court. Photographs presented as evidence appear to show her sitting alone on the bench, at times even in street clothes.
The deputy minister’s denial and the truth about the bonus points
Tsavdaridis has insisted there was nothing improper about the arrangement. He maintains that his daughter held a valid player’s license issued by the federation, that when she played was the coach’s decision, and that she never used the bonus points in the entrance exams. Instead, he says, she earned her place in the Department of Agriculture in Larissa entirely on her own merit.
A report by Mega TV, however, revealed a different side to the story. After scoring roughly 9,700 points and gaining admission to the Larissa department, the student did in fact apply the special 10 percent athlete bonus to seek a place at the Department of Education in Rhodes, though she ultimately never enrolled there.
Parents of other players were scathing about the claim that the points went unused. “The issue isn’t whether she used the points or not,” they said. “So if I don’t use what I ‘stole,’ that means I didn’t ‘steal’? Choosing not to use them after the fact doesn’t erase what came before.”
The team’s coach is reportedly caught in the middle. He was presented with a decision the club’s management had already made, and its board reportedly includes a childhood friend of the deputy minister. He is said to have opposed putting the player on the bench, worried about her safety in such a physical sport and about disrupting the team’s title run. Reports say he has since received threats.
The Hellenic Handball Federation confirmed that the player had held a valid license since October 2025 and had been present on the bench. It noted pointedly, however, that such practices “may raise issues of ethics, meritocracy, or equal treatment.”
