More light shed on killing of Athens lawyer

Three Albanian convicts had intended to extort 5 million euros out of a jailed power firm executive by threatening criminal lawyer Michalis Zafeiropoulos but their plan went wrong, ending in the latter’s death, Greek Police officials revealed Wednesday.

Police have linked five people to the killing of Zafeiropoulos, who was gunned down in his office in central Athens last month. Three are believed to have given the order from prison while another two suspects, also Albanian nationals, visited the lawyer at his office. Their orders had been to injure the lawyer by shooting him in the legs, police said, but for some reason they shot him in the chest.

The three convicts are believed to have paid the pair 20,000 euros to injure Zafeiropoulos, the lawyer of Aristeidis Floros, a former executive of Energa Hellas, serving time for embezzling millions of euros from the power firm.

According to police, the pair asked Zafeiropoulos for the addresses of Floros’s relatives before shooting him.

Police traced one of the two by accessing his cell phone records. The second man remains at large.