Paranga (football)

Paranga (Greek: Παράγκα, literally shanty or hut) is a folk expression in Greece referring to rigging games by selecting favourable referees and match-fixing at the Greek football championship.

The term is mostly associated with the championships of Olympiacos F.C. during the years 1997-2003 and its then president Sokratis Kokkalis, but has also spread to refer to the general corruption in the Greek football. According to the public opinion, the lure has always been the annual financial bonus from UEFA for the participating teams in the UEFA Champions League.

With the method of telephone tapping, Makis Triantafyllopoulos, a TV journalist, trapped a conversation between Thomas Mitropoulos (invisible owner of Egaleo F.C. and at the same time "advisor of Olympiakos on arbitration matters") and a referee (Spathas), saying "...we don't care about the others, we only want Olympiakos win, only Olympiakos and Egaleo, fuck all others..." and referring to Kokkalis as the Uncle. The journalist involved also the president then of the Hellenic Football Federation, Vassilis Gagatsis.

After the taking of Olympiakos' leadership by Evangelos Marinakis, new scandals came in the light, such as the Koriopolis scandal. In one of the recorded conversations, Olympiacos Volou' chairman Achilleas Beos asks protection for the referees (Kalopoulos, Tryfonas) from Evangelos Marinakis, after a controversial winning game of Olympiakos against Panathinaikos on 21 February 2011. In February 2012, the Superleague Greece with the agreement of the Hellenic Football Federation achieved the replacement of the two football prosecutors (Fakos, Antonakakis) with two others (Petropoulos, Karras). The investigation had no progress.

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