EXCLUSIVE: Lottery Bidder's Shameful Past and Life of Crime

The man working to get Victoria's lucrative government lottery monopoly and who already has a sweet deal with the Western Australian government is a traitor to his country engaged in corporate fraud and lottery riggging.

Socrates Kokkalis, the Greek billionaire majority shareholder of Intralot which is seeking to replace Tattslotto was a spy for infamous East German spy agency Stasi against his own Greek government according to Greek and German authorities.

Kokkalis' involvement in espionage was revealed after the collapse of East Germany and the subsequent release of Stasi files.

The former Soviet bloc agent has been aggressively moving into the Australian market with the Western Australian government in August announcing that his company was the preferred bidder to effectively run the Western Australian Lottery including the provision of operation of lottery terminals. (pdf)

THE PROOF OF LOTTO KING'S ESPIONAGE SHAME
The BBC reported in 2002 that Greek prosecutor Dimitri Papangelopoulos announced an investigation into:

espionage, fraud and money laundering and two alleged misdemeanours of soliciting and giving bribes.

He sued a Greek newspaper in defamation for 6.6 million euros for accusing him of committing espionage against his own country and lost the case after the newspaper Kathimerini presented documents from Stasi's own files that clearly incriminated him:

Socrates Kokkalis, the telecommunications, software and electronic gaming tycoon, gave the East German intelligence service frequent reports, right up to 1989, the year in which East Germany collapsed, Kathimerini reported yesterday.

This is illustrated by documents printed from the electronic files of the Stasi spy service, or System Information und Recherche der Aufklaring (SIRA). These records, a type of catalog of the Stasi’s huge store of paper documentation, were believed to have been destroyed.But copies were found in 1990 which took eight years to decipher. When the code was broken, Western authorities found material that had been provided by 4,500 sources, with their code names, from 1969 to 1989. On the basis of this, American authorities convicted an American couple of spying and sentenced them to 17 years and 21 years in prison.

He operated under the codenames Rocco, Krokus and Kaskade from the 1960s and then again from 1985 to the collapse of the East German government in 1989.

CROOKED LOTTERIES
He is also involved in a series of lotteries throughout eastern Europe over which serious probity issues have been raised.

The Greek press have widely reported that lotteries administered by Kokkalis are rigged with proceeds rewarding drug money launderers.

In addition he has been implicated in a series of serious corporate frauds.

SOCIALISTS MADE HIM RICH
Kokkalis once enjoyed close ties with PASOK, the Socialist party in Greece. He used those ties to extract sweet monopoly deals from the Greek government as reported in the Greek press here:

Kokkalis has been a pivotal figure in Greek politics and business. In 1993 Prime Minister Konstantine Mitsotakis granted him the first private license to organise lottery tickets, and Kokkalis ushered in the revolution of Xysto scratchable tickets which immediately told the bearer whether they had won. Under the final premiership of Andreas Papandreou, Kokkalis' business flourished. Under Simitis, Intracom became OTE's exclusive supplier, not just in Greece but also in OTE's acquisitions abroad, and a major defence contractor. In the popular imagination, Kokkalis epitomises special interests.

No doubt the crook-spy was hoping to replicate the scheme with the Victorian Socialist Left through its Minister John Pandazopoulos. The OC is attempting to establish whether the Minister met with Kokkalis or any member of his crime family.

The Armenian press reports that Intracom (Kokkalis' parent company of Intralot) was used by the Soviet bloc finance the Greek Communist Party.



Click here for a very comprehensive overview of the life of Socrates Kokkalis, the traitor to his country, communist/socialist sympathiser, lottery rigger, swindler, influence peddler, bribe payer, money launderer and now Australian lottery service provider and aspiring operator.

Is he a serious contender for the Victorian lottery licence?

Did Minister Pandazopoulos meet with Socrates Kokkalis or any member of his crime family?

Not even the Socialist Left could be this stupid or could they?

Game on.

HAT-TIP: Major hat-tip to the OC informant who alerted us to this outrageous situation.