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How the mafia took control of Mykonos

Murder of surveyor lifts lid on hidden underworld of criminality, corruption, drug dealing and protection rackets

It was a brazen, cold-blooded murder in broad daylight. As Panagiotis Stathis drove a BMW to work in Athens, a man on a scooter drew up alongside him.
Drawing a 9mm pistol, he opened fire, spraying bullets into the vehicle.
The assassin, wearing a helmet, gloves and dark clothes, then calmly reloaded with a second magazine and shot more rounds before speeding off.
Mr Stathis did not stand a chance. He was dead within seconds, gunned down outside his company’s headquarters in the Athens suburb of Psychiko.
The murder of Mr Stathis in July has lifted the lid on a hidden underworld of criminality, corruption, drug dealing and protection rackets in Mykonos, one of the world’s most celebrated tourist hotspots.
Renowned for its blue-domed churches, whitewashed windmills and luxury resorts, Mykonos attracts more than two million visitors a year.
But behind the bling, the beach bars and the boutiques selling Gucci and Dior, a sinister side to the island has emerged.
Mr Stathis, a 54-year-old married father of two, was a surveyor who had worked in Mykonos for decades.
Islanders believe he got on the wrong side of powerful people – either by refusing to carry out surveying work for a new development or by investing in a patch of land that was coveted by others.
“Stathis was a guy who could help developers get permission to build. Some he helped, some he didn’t. And that made him enemies. There is a lot of money to be made from property on Mykonos and this has attracted criminality,” said Markos Pasaliadis, from a campaign group called the Movement of Active Citizens.
The vast amounts of money to be accrued from the luxury villas and five-star hotels that have popped up all over the island, the jewel in Greece’s tourism crown, have attracted shady characters, from Albanian drug dealers to Athenian mobsters.
The murder has shone a light on a side of the island that many would rather not show to the world.
In a hard-hitting editorial entitled “Who governs Mykonos?”, the leading Greek newspaper Kathimerini said: “The mafia now appears to control Mykonos. International organised crime has settled on the island, operating unchecked. The stakes for the state are high, fraught with risks. But this challenge must be met.”
The daily paper, Kathimerini, continued: “What is at stake is not just the future of a valuable destination. The critical question that needs to be answered is, who truly governs Mykonos: the mafia or the Hellenic Republic?”
Not long after the murder, the alleged killer, a 44-year-old Greek man, was arrested in Athens. He is in custody as police investigate a tangled web of real estate deals, rivalry – and revenge.
“There’s an expression in Greek – ‘you smack the saddle to make the donkey hear’. That’s the reason he was killed. A message was being sent to somebody to pay attention,” said an anti-development campaigner from an NGO called Friends of Mykonos who preferred to remain anonymous.
“People were shocked by it because it was so blatant. But it is representative of what is going on here. There’s a lot of money up for grabs and there’s a lot of corruption,” she said.
Criminals are accused of pushing through property deals through violence and intimidation, not only in Mykonos but in nearby Aegean islands such as Paros that are undergoing rapid development.
In Kos, an archaeologist was attacked by a building contractor on July 30. A verbal altercation over a development issue led to the contractor delivering “a direct, unprovoked physical attack and a violent punch with repeated blows to [his] face,” according to SEKE, an association of archaeologists.
There is a feeling in Mykonos that developers with deep pockets can ignore or subvert planning restrictions, building in supposedly protected zones or getting their projects fast-tracked.
Last year, a club on Psarou beach was found to be in flagrant violation of multiple zoning and public access laws, and was ordered to demolish a large number of illegal buildings.
Aerial photography showed that the owners had hugely expanded the beach club without permission.
The Mykonos mafia is accused of dealing drugs and carrying out robberies, targeting celebrities and other wealthy individuals who insist on bringing extravagant quantities of cash and jewellery and then advertising on social media when they are heading out for a night of partying.
Five years ago, the model Gigi Hadid was robbed while holidaying in Mykonos with her sisters. She told her 390,000 followers on Instagram that she would never return to the island. “Spend your money elsewhere,” she wrote.
A broader inquiry into organised crime on the island has been launched by Georgia Adeilini, a supreme court prosecutor from Athens.
In an official communication, she said that the murder had “highlighted the urgent need to tackle the serious crime, characterised by the press as the ‘Mykonos Mafia’, on the island”.
The nexus of crime in one of Greece’s best-known and most glamorous destinations extends to “extortion relating to construction activity, the ‘protection’ of businesses, murder, serious bodily harm, money laundering from criminal activity, serious offences regarding urban planning legislation… and drug trafficking,” the prosecutor wrote.
Greece’s minister for civil protection visited Mykonos last month, promising to boost police numbers and restore law and order.
Michalis Chrysochoidis said: “Our decision is to eliminate from the island all those who engage in illegal activities, whether related to transport, entertainment or a range of other anti-social phenomena.
“Our mission is to dismantle all such gangs and groups, who transgress and commit crimes. There is no place in Mykonos for goons or drug dealers or those who come here breaking the law to reap the benefits.”
The murder compounded an already tense situation on the island – last year, an archaeologist who had blocked several construction projects after finding archaeological remains on the proposed sites was viciously beaten up by unknown attackers.
Manolis Psarros was left with a fractured nose, broken ribs and severe bruising after the assault near his home in Athens.
The attack was “indicative of how out-of-control the situation in Mykonos has become”, said Despoina Koutsoumba, the president of the Association of Greek Archaeologists. It was a “mafia-style hit” related to big business interests, she said.
In June this year, an Albanian who had allegedly worked as an enforcer for a construction boss in Mykonos was murdered in Korydallos prison, a maximum-security jail in a grimy part of Athens.
A fire that ravaged a restaurant in Athens in August 2023 has also been linked to Mykonos mafia feuds.
The island’s mayor, who was elected last December, acknowledged that there was a problem with criminality, but insisted that he was up to the task of tackling it.
“It’s a fact that Mykonos has changed in the last 10 years,” Christos Veronis said in his office in the historic town hall, which overlooks the whitewashed houses and azure bay of Mykonos Town.
“There are many big companies, both Greek and foreign, that are investing in tourism in Mykonos and there are people who follow the money. There’s not a ‘Mykonos mafia’. It’s the Athens mafia, who come over here in the summer. They create this criminality.
“Our goal is to solve these problems and at the same time, the minister for civil protection came to Mykonos and promised extra police officers to protect the island.”
The murder of Mr Stathis in July was a big shock. “It’s the first time they killed a surveyor. He was not a criminal,” he said.
Meanwhile, the building work continues. The island’s last quiet, secluded spots, known mostly to locals, are being relentlessly swept up by developers. The economic rewards are huge: the total revenue from hotels in Mykonos has reached €750 million (£627 million) a year.
Two-thirds of that comes from five-star hotels. There are now 73 on an island that covers only 33 square miles. Between them, the five-star hotels offer 7,500 beds – the island’s permanent population is only 11,000.
In Panormos bay, on the north coast of the island, a large sweep of silky sand has been colonised by an upmarket beach club. Authorities imposed a €22 million fine for illegal construction last year, but the owners have launched an appeal.
The club was very much in operation when The Telegraph visited, with staff putting up sun umbrellas and preparing for big-spending guests.
“There was nothing here four or five years ago. Traditionally this is where a lot of Mykonos people came with their kids. A lot of them don’t come anymore,” said the anti-development campaigner from Friends of Mykonos, who has lived there for decades. “It’s in your face. People on the island are complaining all the time about it. They went ballistic when the beach loungers covered nearly the entire beach.”
It is the same story at Kalo Livadi bay on the south side of the island, where the valley behind the beach is now crammed with whitewashed villas and half-completed developments. A hillside that overlooks the bay has been scooped out by diggers to make way for a vast new Four Seasons resort.
What little remains of “old Mykonos” is unlikely to survive the onslaught of sleek hotels and sushi bars much longer.
A glimpse of what the island once looked like can be seen at Kalafatis Bay, where there is a crescent of sand backed by a cluster of jerry-built fishermen’s cottages and two small hillocks known as “the breasts of Aphrodite”.
Fishermen repair their boats and cats loll in the shade. It’s a scene straight out of the film Mamma Mia! – but this, too, is slated for a big hotel development. There is no suggestion of any criminal wrongdoing in these projects, but they are certainly contributing to overdevelopment on the island.
Dimitris Koutsoukos, the deputy mayor, admits that construction has been allowed to get out of hand. Island authorities say they have almost no control over planning issues – they say it is the government in Athens that decides whether to allow or block developments.
“There was no planning. People didn’t think about parking, about roads, they just kept building, building. It’s too much for a little island. And where there’s money, crime follows,” he said.
Its iconic windmills, picturesque bays and expensive cocktail lounges still pull in the tourists in their droves. But rampant construction is threatening to erode the appeal of “the island that seduced the world”, as it is described in a photographic exhibition in Mykonos Town.
“I don’t think that it’s been destroyed yet, but we are very close to destroying it. It’s extremely sad,” said the anti-development campaigner from Friends of Mykonos.
She is more blunt in her language as she watches a mechanical digger prepare ground for yet another development.
“For people like me, who have grown up on Mykonos, it is now spoilt. We hope that somebody will say ‘enough’, no more raping the land. Let’s keep it for our children, let’s not destroy it.
“If we don’t look out, it will end up like Mexico City with people living behind high walls and big gates, protected by bodyguards. There will be various little empires run by unsavoury people. Nobody wants that.”

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