Greek probes into soccer 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 George Lyngeridis and that had moved beyond soccer 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 and seen by Reuters 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 Yiannis Vroutsis told Reuters. "They used clubs as a cover for their illegal acts."

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

The fan groups' hierarchies and discipline "offered the conditions for criminal organisations to thrive within them," Supreme Court Prosecutor Georgia Adilini has said. Police officials told Reuters gangs can emerge within fan groups or infiltrate them to sell drugs, or seek new recruits.

On December 7, 2023, some fans of Olympiacos soccer club moved a bag of flares and makeshift explosives from a storage room at their soccer stadium to the venue for a women's volleyball derby against Panathinaikos, a police probe found. 

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

Last month, a Greek court convicted a 20-year-old Olympiacos fan of manslaughter and gave him a life