By Johnny Askounis/ info@eurohoops.net
Panagiotis Fasoulas has spoken out on the developments shaking the Hellenic Basketball Federation, shortly following the confirmed pre-trial detention of former president Vangelis Liolios on Sunday.
In a written statement shared on social media, the Greek basketball legend characterized the current era as the ‘darkest period’ and called for an immediate investigation into past federation elections.
“We are undisputedly in the darkest period for the sport of basketball, a sport that has always been synonymous with national achievements and national pride. Recent judicial rulings have proven that the whispers and insinuations of previous years regarding actions, individuals, and their role within EOK were entirely well-founded. The reality now is the existence of a criminal organization within the Hellenic Basketball Federation.
In the 2021 EOK elections, together with Fanis Christodoulou, Memos Ioannou, and other associates, all highly accomplished figures in the sport, we submitted an alternative proposal for the evolution and prospects of Greek basketball. In this endeavor, we had Nikos Galis and Panagiotis Giannakis by our side.
The results, however, did not justify our efforts. In the subsequent elections in 2024, and while the Liolios administration had already given ‘samples of its work’, Mr. Liolios and the board members of his faction recorded—paradoxically—an even higher percentage.
As if that were not enough, both during and after the elections, a coordinated effort was unleashed to personally ridicule, discredit, and annihilate my personality within the basketball world.
I believe that now that the abscess is bursting, the investigation must be extended to both electoral processes of 2021 and 2024, which were conducted via electronic voting rather than in person, following Mr. Liolios’s insistence. In these elections, he recorded percentages that cannot be explained by logic or by the actual dynamics of the electoral body.
During my tenure as a board member until 2024, even though from a certain point onward I abstained from the meetings of a body whose members only knew the word ‘yes’, I exposed in every possible way the lack of transparency, the political favoritism treated as normalcy, and the corruption of consciences, phenomena that served as the ‘banners’ of the Liolios administration from day one. I continued to do the same after the 2024 elections, where I was not even elected as a board member.
From grandiose proclamations ‘about children who will never cry again’, we have ended up with school basketball games being the subject of a prosecutorial investigation. Meritocracy surpassed all boundaries with the invention of the so-called ‘Wild Cards’, through which teams were relegated on the court yet ultimately remained in the division, while teams that earned promotion were bypassed by others that legally deserved to move up.
Furthermore, I remind everyone that all decisions were taken unanimously by a board of directors comprised of individuals who functioned, and seek to continue functioning, as ‘puppets’ of the now-former president.
Regarding current developments, I believe that Greek basketball and the people who truly love and serve it are devastated.
To immediately reverse the climate of distrust that has been created and to restore the prestige of the sport as much as possible, we, the people who come from the very core of the sport, as well as the state, must proceed with a radical breakthrough.
A breakthrough that will contribute to the purging of the current state of decay, while simultaneously moving forward to the next day.
A next day that must be built on transparency, legality, and equality before the law for each and every person in basketball.”
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