news.ert.gr
The duel from the past few days between the two largest shareholders of the football club Panathinaikos Yiannis Vardinoyanis and Andreas Vgenopulos turned into a fire fight. After last week club president Nicolas Pateras resigned from his position dramatically the fate of Panathinaikos is now “hung in the air”. Everybody frozen in anticipation of 28.05., the day of the next meeting during which a new president of the Greens will be elected. The muddy waters and uncertainty were expected to clear temporarily the position of Vardinoyanis. Unfortunately, exactly the opposite happened. In his appeal to the shareholders of the club to purchase more shares of the team, he caused the anger and bitter comments of many, including Vgenopulos’. Vgenopulos or Mr Mig, as the others call him reproached his colleague that he simply aims to "take the money of the fools". He commented on the position of Vardinoyanis unequivocally: "Finally, the masks fell. Mr. Yannis Vardinoyanis wants to put money in his pocket in order to sell the Panathinaikos which he loves above all. In order to get here an incredible game of communication was built, which started with an apparent increase in capital by 40-50 million euro, which had to be done by him... but it ended with 15 million euro and estimates showing a Panathinaikos with huge losses but at the same time valued at more than 100 million euro..." The criticism of Vgenopulos do not end there. He criticizes his colleagues that he uses the reset of Panathinaikos, the withdrawal of the successful president, thereduction of contracts and the small amount of transfers to "take the money of the fools". He claims that the naïve people have invested 67 million euro without any evaluation, only for their love for the team. "The fools, however, are willing to give money to strengthen Panathinaikos and not the already filled pocket of Mr. Yiannis Vardinoyanis" – said in his angry comments Vgenopulos.
Vardinoyanis did not remain indifferent to the criticisms of his colleague. He said that in this case it is not about anything else, but to underestimate what he did for more than 30 years, and to tarnish the name of his family. "If someone has other plans for Panathinaikos and believes that he can replace my family by purchasing the a bigger part of the majority share package of the team, rather than spreading utopian scenarios, which could jeopardize the integrity and reputation of Panathinaikos, I publicly urge him to submit its proposal until the next meeting of the board of directors" said the shareholder.
No matter how much the two men of Panathinaikos were being careful for the scandal not to become a soap opera it seems that things go exactly that way. In the atmosphere of mutual distrust and accusations his silence decide to terminate also Nicolas Pateras himself. Former president stood on the side of Vgenopulos and told the media that from the very beginning he had a clear position on the issue of shares. He never even hinted that he intends to buy more than what he has and in a recent official statement he laid out his intentions with regard to this issue.