Μake us preferred on Google Former Greek Basketball Federation president Vangelis Liolios has been ordered into pretrial detention following the agreement of the investigating judge and prosecutor.
Although Liolios denied any connection to match-fixing, his defense failed to persuade the investigating judge and prosecutor, who unanimously decided that he should be remanded in custody.
Judicial authorities ordered the same treatment for another defendant, a businessman who is alleged to have been Liolios’ right-hand man.
Following the latest judicial developments, all three defendants who have appeared before the authorities so far have received the same treatment.
Attention now turns to the remaining three of the six defendants for whom arrest warrants were issued following the conclusion of an investigation by the sports prosecutor.
They are one active basketball referee and two former referees, who are due to testify before the investigating judge on Monday. They, too, deny any involvement in the case under investigation.
However, the completion of their testimony will not mark the end of the judicial investigation, which remains in full swing. According to information from sources familiar with the case, additional individuals are expected to appear as defendants in the coming days at the Athens court complex on the site of the former Evelpidon military academy, meaning the list of defendants is set to grow.
Attention is also turning to those allegedly directly affected by the defendants’ actions. They are expected to be called as witnesses, with some also seeking to formally support the prosecution, as former Greek international basketball player and coach Panagiotis Giannakis intends to do.
Former Federation President Claims ‘Setup’
Liolios and the businessman had earlier categorically denied the charges that brought them before the judicial authorities, essentially maintaining a defense that the case against them had been orchestrated.
According to information about his testimony before the investigating judge, Liolios is said to have maintained that certain individuals wanted to remove him from the presidency of the Hellenic Basketball Federation, known by its Greek initials EOK.
In seeking to rebut allegations of match-fixing, Liolios reportedly cited his financial records and submitted documents from four tax audits conducted over the past decade, none of which resulted in any findings against him.
The most recent of those audits was reportedly conducted in 2025 and covered the years 2019 and 2020. It examined all of his financial affairs, including his personal assets, his Promitheas basketball team and his business.
According to the same information, investigators also examined safe-deposit boxes as well as domestic and foreign bank accounts, with nothing improper found.
His co-defendant, the businessman, adopted the same defense, denying the allegations against him. He spent approximately 40 minutes in the investigating judge’s office and rejected all of the acts attributed to him in the indictment while answering the judge’s targeted questions.
