2024-04-12 18:28:21
Two brutal crimes with four deaths, dozens of suicides of reputable businessmen and thousands of family dramas, which unfold every day behind the closed doors of houses and shops, have caused in just a few days the terrifying escalation of usury. Threats, blackmail, beatings are enough for millions of assets to change hands overnight. Borrowed, they reach despair and surrender unconditionally to the lenders. And when the knot reaches the comb, then they either put an end to their lives and the torture of exsanguination, or they paint their hands with blood and shock the whole of Greece, who watches in shock the dramatic end of the episodes of a red circle, where the perpetrator turns into victim…
Most of them were forced and are forced to resort to loans from moneylenders because of the serious financial difficulties they face, as their debts are suffocating them. The financial crisis has dried up liquidity in the market. This fact has the result that many entrepreneurs and ordinary workers turn to people who willingly give them money to make it easier for them and then… they suck the blood!
A few days ago, a beach tavern in Eretria was stained with the blood of three men when a 54-year-old businessman from Evia opened fire on them. According to what he claimed both in his testimony to the police authorities and to the judicial officials, the massacre that “froze” the country took place because it could no longer bear the financial bleeding from a large usury ring. “They had…drank my blood and they wouldn’t stop at anything. They wanted to destroy me. At the age of 54, I became a murderer to escape torture and save my family from destruction,” claimed the murderer and added: “I had reached despair and had to borrow the sum of forty-four thousand euros from the father of one of victims. But the interest was exorbitant. They had already hammered two of my houses and wanted to confiscate my car as well.”
In fact, the businessman had filed six lawsuits in the last five years against specific persons for usury, extortion and threats. About a year ago, when strangers had gone to the car wash he runs in the center of Chalkida and started shooting in the air to intimidate him, he himself came to Athens and bought a pistol illegally, as he says he was afraid for his life. With this pistol he also caused the carnage.
After the triple murder of Eretria and before the blood of the victims had time to dry, it was revealed that the dismembered body found on May 18 in a garbage bin in the Petraloni area belonged to a 70-year-old woman, who was allegedly a loan shark.
Her dismembered body had been found in plastic bags in the garbage bin, on Alkminis Street in Ano Petralona, by municipal employees who went to collect the garbage. The stench for the past ten days has been unbearable in the area, so the residents notified the municipality to see what exactly is going on. In front of the hideous sight, everyone was speechless. As announced by the prosecuting authorities, the victim was a 70-year-old Georgian woman and the perpetrator a 37-year-old compatriot, who, as she claimed in her confession, had borrowed various amounts from time to time, due to financial needs, but could not repay them due to excessive interest. On May 5, the 70-year-old went to the 37-year-old’s house and demanded to pay her the second installment of the amount owed to her. The 37-year-old did not have the money, and as a result, after a fight, he killed her with a kitchen knife.
Suicides due to debts
In the early hours of last Sunday, a locksmith, unable to stand the pressure and blackmail any longer, ended his life by falling from the bridge of Rio – Antirrio, while a few hours later a 58-year-old businessman in Crete committed suicide by pointing his rifle at his head. His relatives denounce unscrupulous rings that took his life, as he could not cope with the exorbitant debts.
In Trikala, another businessman was found hanged, at the same time as the police handcuffed a 42-year-old moneylender in Korydallos, putting an end to his activity.
They borrow on predatory terms to make ends meet
Truck driver could not stand the pressure and died from a crash on the steering wheel.
According to what the president of the Borrowers’ Association, Thanos Thanopoulos, told “Sunday Espresso”, “recently, when the banks stopped giving money and the tap was turned off, the whole world turns to usurers in order to be able to borrow and make it even for a while. Thus, the disaster begins. In recent months, the phenomenon has reached uncontrollable proportions. Every day, hundreds of people from all over Greece report their drama to us. Debt suicides are on the rise and things are getting worse as time goes by. On Friday, a businessman in Kalamata who had been involved with moneylenders attempted suicide,” he emphasized and added: “A while ago, a truck driver, while on his way to Germany, received so much pressure and extortion from the moneylenders on his mobile phone that he kill his wife and children, who could not stand it and died at the wheel of a heart attack. In fact, 32 thousand euros were needed to bring his body here and be buried, and because there was no money, he was cremated by the municipality of Nuremberg in Germany.”
As he revealed to us, after a comprehensive study carried out by the special secretary of the Ministry of Justice and jurist Marinos Skandamis on usury, “the professional profile of the perpetrators was revealed: pensioners (20.14%), traders (33.33%) , self-employed (33.33%), public and private employees (6.60%) and income earners (6.60%). As far as the profile of the victims is concerned, these are: merchants (50%), freelancers (37.5%) and public and private employees (6.25%)”.
The interest rates at which loan sharks lend are literally predatory. In the best case they range at 20%, but there are worse ones, reaching and exceeding 100%. As people-victims reveal to Mr. Thanopoulos, the interest rate is determined according to the money needs of the borrower. The greater the need, the greater the interest rate. “And they all end up in disaster. Usury is now an organized crime. These are unscrupulous people,” he concluded.
A businesswoman from Kifissia also fell into the hands of such people, who, as private investigator Sokratis Stratis revealed to us, “borrowed approximately 11 million drachmas in 2000 and was still paying. When she gave them everything, then they beat her severely. In fact, a lawsuit has been filed against a specific person at the Agios Panteleimon Police Department for the beating. They threatened to kill her brother. A few months after her beating, when her brother took his pension and lump sum, he disappeared. Three years have passed since the day he disappeared and he is still missing. I have undertaken the investigation to locate him and everything points to a usury ring.”
Another case of usury is being investigated by the detective Nikolaos Pelekasis, who, as he told us: “A businessman has been caught in the web of usury, who was financially ruined and is being blackmailed. The people who threaten him are ruthless. They had lent him 300,000 euros with an interest rate of 40%,” he emphasized and concluded: “We are trying to gather all the evidence and send it to the Justice Department, in an attempt to save him and dozens of people.”
JULI STARIDA
Source: Espresso
detective athens
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