Ex Thessaloniki mayor gets 8-year term following release on health grounds
Former Thessaloniki mayor Vassilis Papageorgopoulos and Michalis Lemousias, who served as the local authority’s general secretary, were each sentenced on Friday by a Thessaloniki court to eight years in prison for money laundering related to the embezzlement of municipal funds.
The two were allowed to walk free pending their appeals.
Papageorgopoulos, who was mayor from 1999 to 2010, had also been sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2013 for embezzling nearly 18 million euros in municipal funds.
He was released in 2015 thanks to a law allowing convicts with disabilities who have served at least a fifth of their terms to be freed. A misdemeanor court accepted his appeal to be freed on compassionate grounds due to heart problems.
