Attractively situated in a Piraeus suburb lying at the foot of Mount Aigaleo atop which Xerxes witnessed his spectacular defeat at Salamis, Korydallos hosts today much later chiefs of state who contemplate at leisure the events which led to their undoing.
Here, former self-proclaimed president of the republic and deposer of monarchs, George Papadopoulos, can be found taking a morning constitutional in the company of the other two members of the fallen triumvirate, Makarezos and Pattakos, and with their successor, Ioannidis.
Lately, new additions to Korydallos’ star-studded guest list are all involved with the expanding Bank of Crete scandal and its fugitive director and admitted swindler, George Koskotas. These include lawyer Yiannis Mantzouranis, former secretary general of the PASOK cabinet, who has been charged, among other things, with being intermediary for the transfer of two million dollars to the Swiss bank account of former Deputy Premier and Justice Minister, Menios Koutsoyiorgas. Then there is Ioannis Mantagos, head of the state agency OAE, the Organization for the Rehabilitation of Companies – those, that is, coyly referred to as “problematic”. A third taken into custody is Panayiotis Vournas, governor of ELTA, the Hellenic Post Office.
Certainly the most colorful is Theofanis Tombras, general manager of OTE, the Hellenic Telecommunication Organization. This mafioso-style figure has been charged with criminal misconduct, yet the government has been organizing rallies on his behalf and he continues at his job, managing the affairs of the largest state corporation from behind bars.
Another resident of Korydallos whose name has been linked with Koskotas is the Palestinian guerrilla, Mohammed Rashid. For months the US has been requesting his extradition in the belief that he was connected with bombings of US planes in 1982 and 1986. A report in an American publication claims that the government here is willing to trade Rashid for Koskotas, though this has been denied. On the eve of the Areopagos, or Supreme Court, review of the Rashid case, a bomb set by the First May urban terrorist group exploded in the Psychiko home of the Supreme Court president, Samouil Samouil.
It might be welcome relief to put a historical slant on things by explaining how the extradition treaty between Greece and the US so often referred to nowadays came about, for it was the result of a saga involving another fugitive financier against a background of political intrigue as thrilling as what is going on today – and that was in the age of innocence before US military bases in Greece started mucking things up around here.
The embezzler then was Samuel Insull. Born in a grubby part of London, Insull emigrated to the US and became personal advisor to Thomas Edison. At an age when Koskotas was a mere teller at the Bank of Crete, Insull was already general manager of most of Edison’s huge enterprises.
By 1929 Insull had a far-flung empire said to be worth on paper over 800 million dollars. Then came the crash. The spectacular burst of the Insull bubble wiped out tens of thousands of small investors and by 1932 Insull, the most hated man in America and needing 36 bodyguards to protect him, fled to Europe. He was advised to “visit” Athens since no extradition treaty existed between Greece and the US.
Insull arrived here in early June 1933 two months after a military coup failed to overthrow the Populist government and several days before Venizelos narrowly escaped an assassination attempt as he was driving from Kifissia down to Athens. Living then in a more civilized world, Insull and his wife stayed in a suite at the Grande Bretagne and mixed affably in Athenian society. But against a background of political turmoil, Greece and the US bickered over the demands and the refusals for Insull’s arrest. The major aim of Roosevelt’s first envoy to Greece, Lincoln MacVeagh, was to remand Insull but the treaty was not signed until the bird had flown the coop. Greece finally ordered Insull’s expulsion but he had already left secretly on a boat bound for Egypt. Refused permission to dock in Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania and even French Somaliland, the tramp steamer’s wanderings around the Mediterranean made front-page news.
Finally it arrived in Istanbul. The State Department demanded Insull’s arrest and Turkey complied. He was forthwith sent back to the US, jailed and put on trial. The case of the United States of America versus Samuel Insull was a cruel blow to ruined investors. The verdict was returned not guilty and although civil litigation harassed him for the few years remaining to him, Insull was free of criminal courts.
Compared to Insull and Koskotas, Mohammed Rashid is admittedly a drab fellow, and with all due respect to Tombras, the most colorful inmate Korydallos ever had was Theodoros Venardos.
He appeared during that limbo period 15 years ago when the junta was collapsing from within, and the public wanted a hero – or antihero – who personified the times. A gangster with flair who masqueraded as a priest or a pregnant woman on his prowls, and rode about town in a Jaguar, Venardos won the title The Man with the Gladiolas when he robbed a bank with a pistol concealed in an arrangement of flowers. He was finally arrested on a minor charge and incarcerated in Korydallos.
One day when Venardos was playing football in the prison yard, a guard lay down his gun to fetch the ball which had gone over the wall. In a flash, Venardos was over it, too. All the sirens jammed and he was gone.
Caught in New York, he was returned to Korydallos where, for some reason, he languished. He kept swallowing things like buttons and coins and nails and he finally did himself in by devouring a plateful of ground glass. The autopsy on his stomach read like the inventory of a well-stocked kiosk, but it is said that many an Athenian maiden mourned his passing in secret. Alas, times have changed.
