By Anastasia Vamvaka
The shipping community has been shocked since the morning with what took place in the offices of the European Navigation company in Glyfada and the murder of the sister of the shipowner Spyros Karnezis, Maria Karnezis, the managing director of the shipping company, Antonis Vlasakis, and the former captain of the company Ilias Koukoularis .
Since 1979, when the company was founded, it has played an important course in the field of shipping, mainly in the tanker sector, with mainly conservative moves in the renewal of its fleet. According to the latest data, he had a fleet of 10 tankers, built from 2005 to 2015, mainly of crude oil and chemicals, while he also has three smaller tankers which he used mainly to supply the islands as Spyros Karnezis is also main shareholder of the company ELINOIL.
Now, the shipping company was mainly under the supervision of Spyros Karnezis’ sister, Maria, who had a long career in the banking industry as she had worked closely with the former Governor of the Bank of Greece, Giorgios Provopoulos, before becoming fully involved with European Navigation.
The headquarters of European Navigation Inc. are located in Glyfada, with the group also maintaining representative offices in London and New York which are responsible for all commercial activities (mainly chartering, S&P, finance and insurance). The office in Athens is responsible for technical management, operation, insurance and crew.
In the winter of 2019, a company ship was attacked by a gang of pirates in Lome, Togo, with three sailors (one Greek, one Georgian and one Filipino) freed after a month of being held hostage.