Kathimerini Greece Newsroom
Two officers of the police’s motorcycle division were arrested on Monday for leaking a video showing the body of a man who was gunned down in a mafia-style execution in the Athens suburb of Neos Kosmos in the early hours of Sunday.
The officers were arrested by the Internal Affairs division for breaching official confidentiality.
According to the police, they were the responding officers in Sunday’s shooting, arriving first at the crime scene.
One stands accused of videotaping the scene with his mobile phone and sharing it with his colleague, who went on to send it to another three police officers.
Their mobile phones have been confiscated, while the two main suspects were to face a prosecutor.
The victim, 44-year-old Vangelis Zambounis, was a prominent figure in the Greek underworld and had faced past charges as a leading member of an extortionist racket.
He was gunned down outside a gas station, reportedly owned by him. Security camera footage shows a man firing dozens of rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle through the driver’s bulletproof window just seconds after the 44-year-old entered his vehicle. After emptying two magazines of bullets, the assailant is seen opening the car door and shooting the visitor multiple times with a handgun.
The shooter arrived at the scene in a Lexus that had been reported stolen abroad six months ago and had fake license plates matching a different vehicle in Greece. It is believed that he was working with a getaway driver and that there may have been more members of the team near the site of the killing.
Investigators are exploring the possibility that Zambounis’ execution was an act of retribution or that it was a contract killing related to control of the contraband fuel and tobacco markets.
