Investigators following money trail as Karaivaz murder trial set to start

As the trial into the assassination of investigative crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz is set to get under way on Wednesday, investigators are following a money trail they hope will shed more light on the gangland-style shooting outside the journalist’s Athens home on April 9, 2021. 

According to reports on Tuesday, investigators have discovered an unexplained, six-figure payment in the accounts of the two main suspects accused of carrying out the shooting that may lead back to a person or persons connected with the so-called ‘Greek Mafia,’ an organized crime network that is seen behind several execution-style killings of notorious underground figures in the past few years and which Karaivaz was investigating at the time of his killing.

The suspects, brothers aged 48 and 40, were arrested in May last year, with one of them allegedly having been linked to a protection racket believed to be connected to the Greek Mafia.

It is believed that they had been carrying out a contract killing when they gunned down the 52-year-old journalist outside his home in the southern Athens suburb of Alimos. 

An experienced crime reporter, Karaivaz had private and professional connections in the Greek underworld and among corrupt police officers connected to it. He was also a key witness in a 2015-2017 National Intelligence Service probe into dirty police and sex/gambling rackets.

Two suspects linked to those rackets – both known to the journalist – were killed in 2019 and 2020. One of the officers implicated was gunned down in 2018. 

Karaivaz was also a witness in an ongoing case involving a large protection racket.