The Greek sports judge on Friday banned Panathinaikos BC owner Dimitris Giannakopoulos from sporting arenas for ten months while also slapping him with a 20,000-euro fine stemming from his behavior during and after the second finals game against Olympiacos BC at Piraeus on June 1.
The reasoning behind the ruling was that the Green’s owner had repeatedly defamed the sport through his actions and words.
The ruling also compels Panathinaikos AKTOR Athens to pay a €44,000 fine, while the Green’s captain, Costas Sloukas, must also pay a €1,100 fine for “inappropriate conduct” toward the referees.
Pana’s players, Mathias Lessort and Ioannis Papapetrou, were both acquitted on charges of “inappropriate conduct.”
Greece’s basketball finals (1-1) had been previously suspended by the Deputy Minister of Sports, Ioannis Vroutsis, following a series of acrimonious incidents. These included the ejection of Panathinaikos BC’s Turkish coach Ergin Ataman, indecent hand gestures by Giannakopoulos to a group of Olympiacos’s fans, and obscene chants from some of the Reds’ fans aimed at Giannakopoulos’s daughter.
Following a meeting with Vroutsis on Wednesday with Olympiacos’ owners, Panagiotis and Giorgos Angelopoulos, the two revealed their intention for Olympiacos to play in the 3rd game of the best-of-five series scheduled for Friday at the OAKA stadium.
