Socratis Kokkalis

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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 Professor of Surgery at Athens University 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 where he completed his studies, before settling in East Germany, where his father became a university lecturer and personal physician to Walter Ulbricht.

Kokkalis was educated in physics and electronics in the universities of Berlin and Moscow and finally settled permanently in Athens in 1965. He established in 1977 Intracom a telecom equipment manufacturer and IT industry. Besides Intracom, he established Intrasoft which was merged with Intracom, Intrasoft International, Intrakat and Intramet which merged to Intrakat, Intralot and a number of other companies. Since 2005 Intracom became a holding company and the various activities where split to Intracom Telecom, Intracom IT Solutions and Intracom Defense. Hellas On Line, the first Greek ISP became a member of the holding company. Intracom Holdings through its companies has more than 3000 employees in Greece and abroad, has sold to more than 70 countries and is one of the largest companies in Greece.

Because of his successful career in the business area he was accused many times for espionage and other crimes. Greek courts have acquit from all accusations.

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