The owner of the Panathinaikos Athens basketball club is losing it in the final series against Olympiacos Piraeus. The series is interrupted and the scandal boss receives an insane penalty.
Insane penalty in Greece! The owner of the Panathinaikos Athens basketball club, Dimitris Giannakopoulos, was ejected from the arena before Game 2 of the final series against Olympiacos Piraeus. Now his penalty has been determined.
He has been banned from stadiums in Greece for the next ten months and fined 200,000 euros. The sanctions take effect immediately.
Dimitris Giannakopoulos gets an insane penalty
In addition, the club was fined 44,000 euros for Giannakopoulos’ behavior. Panathinaikos coach Ergin Ataman has to pay 5,000 euros for inappropriate comments.
Panathinaikos player Kostas Sloukas was fined 1,000 euros for “misconduct towards a referee”. According to the official game report, the Greek player said to one of the referees: “Shame! You did that last year too.”
The Greek government temporarily put a stop to the final after several escapades in the first two duels (series score 1:1) and interrupted the final for the time being.
“The final on Wednesday will be postponed. In addition, the owners of both teams will be invited to a meeting with Giannis Vroutsis at the Ministry of Education to explicitly commit to ending this situation. Otherwise, the championship will be canceled permanently,” Government Spokesman Pavlos Marinakis is quoted as saying in Greek media.
The traditionally heated final series between the two arch-rivals had previously escalated to an unprecedented level. Among other things, Giannakopoulos was ejected from the Olympiacos hall and, according to the home team, the local public prosecutor’s office had ordered the arrest of the controversial owner.
“The public prosecutor’s office wanted to arrest Dimitris Giannakopoulos. He then fled the cabin so that he would not be arrested while the police were chasing him,” Olympiacos said.