Socratis Kokkalis

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Socratis Kokkalis (born May 27, 1939) is a Greek businessman. He is the CEO and majority shareholder of Intracom, a major Greek telecommunications company. He also owns Olympiacos, a major Greek football club and is the president of the Kokkalis Foundation.

[edit] Life

Socratis Kokkalis is the son of Petros Kokkalis, a scientist and minister for health in the Political Committee of National Liberation (the outlawed government established by the Communist Party of Greece) in Greece during the Greek Civil War of 1945-1949.

After the communist defeat in the civil war, he and his family left Greece as refugees, living for a brief time in Romania before settling in East Germany, where his father became a university lecturer and personal physician to Walter Ulbricht.

Socratis was educated in physics and electronics in the universities of Berlin and Moscow and finally settled permanently in Athens in 1965.

His fοrtune is estimated at $1.2 billion and in the 2001 Forbes list, he was listed 421nd.

[edit] Accusations of spying

Kokkalis has been accused of having worked as an inofficial informer to the Stasi, but nothing of the kind was ever proven. He was the first Greek citizen to face a formal probe for spying against his own state, although the accusation was eventually withdrawn.

[edit] External links

• the Kokkalis Foundation
• article on the Stasi accusations from the BBC
• article on the Stasi accusations in Kathimerini