November 4 – Evangelos Marinakis, the Greek shipping magnet and owner of Premier League club Nottingham Forest, is suing a football rival from Greece for more than £2.1 million in a high court libel claim over an alleged “smear campaign” including “false” allegations of match-fixing.
Marinakis, who also owns perennial Greek champions, Olympiakos is suing Irini Karipidis, the owner of Aris, over allegations made on a website, social media, and mobile billboards between November 2023 and March 2024.
In a court hearing last week, Marinakis, who denies all the allegations made in the ‘smear’ campaign, along with separate accusations over a separate drug trafficking case.
The Forest owner who has courted plenty of controversy since taking over at the two-time champions of Europe, including most recently being banned for spitting near officials, has hired barristers who have said that the allegations were “completely untrue” and that the case should proceed in an English court because it had a “real prospect of success”.
David Sherborne, who represents Marinakis, said in written submissions to the court: “The allegations which Mr Marinakis complains of are completely untrue and nothing in the defendants’ evidence comes anywhere close to substantiating [the claims]them.”
He continued: “[The claims] involved false allegations highly defamatory of Mr Marinakis, making accusations that he was guilty of being the leader of a criminal organisation, guilty of match-fixing practices including extortion, fraud, and arson, as well as there being strong grounds to suspect him of deep and active involvement in international heroin trafficking.”
The court heard that these allegations had appeared on a Forest-themed website, X, and YouTube as well as mobile billboards that were viewed around the City Ground on matchdays. The YouTube channel, X account, and website were later taken down.
With a taste for litigation, Marinakis, is also suing Amani Swiss (Cyprus) Limited, a company of which Karipidis is president, and the Israeli national Ari Harow, and his company, Sheyaan Consulting Limited.
Representing Karipidis is Matthew Hodson who told the court that the publications were “procured or created by a US PR firm” named Harris Media, which was paid $25,000 but is not involved in the case, and that there was no evidence of “actual harm” to Marinakis’s reputation.
The dispute between the two Greeks has centered on an Olympiakos/Aris match in the 2022/23 season in which it is claimed that Marinakis approached Karipidis’s brother Theodoros to fix a “critical” game between the teams. That game ended 2-2 and the dropped points resulted in Olympiakos going on to miss out on a fourth successive title.
Hodson said: “During the game, Mr Marinakis became so angry that, according to Ms Karipidis, he threatened that Theodoros ‘would not leave the field alive’ if Olympiakos lost. At the end of the game, Mr Marinakis then told Theodoros, ‘You are finished’ and ‘I will destroy you’.
“Thereafter, Mr Marinakis began a campaign of intimidation and interference with the lives and businesses of Ms Karipidis and her brother.”
The hearing before Richard Spearman KC, sitting as a deputy high court judge, continues, however, it hasn’t seemed to bother Forest, who have had a positive start to the campaign and currently sit in 7th place.
Contact the writer of this story, Nick Webster, at oc.ll1734049563abtoo1734049563fdlro1734049563wedis1734049563ni@of1734049563ni1734049563