The information collected so far reveal the actions of the three arrested who are accused of blackmailing public organizations, companies and banks.

On Monday, police arrested one publisher and two journalists,  Panayiotis Mavrikos, publisher of the newspaper “Acropolis” and journalists Panagiotis Mousas and Christos Fragou, for threatening banks and public organizations, with the publication of news that were negative for their companies, in exchange for large amounts of money.

The case was brought to light after an executive of Greece’s water utility EYDAP filed a complaint with the police saying that one of the arrested asked her to give money to his publisher so that “he wouldn’t write negative comments about EYDAP.”

Then, the police taped the conversations she had with the people involved, from which authorities concluded that the arrested men controlled many newspapers and news websites and they intended to coordinate to achieve their aim.

The men also threatened her and her family, as EYDAP’s employee stated to the police.

Based on the information collected up to now, the accused men were first writing negative articles about the companies and then they were blackmailing them and asking to pay advertising money so as to write positive articles.

The recording of the conversations show that Mr. Mavrikios had a key role in the team, since he could publish positive or negative articles on his newspaper and two news websites concerning both EYDAP and State Minister Nikos Pappas about the media licenses legislation.

In the conversation, it was mentioned that Mr. Mavrikos had published negative articles for Vangelis Marinakis, Vangelis Meimarakis and Kyriakos Mitsotakis, for whom, as it was said, there was an agreement between former Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis and Alexis Tsipras that he would never be prime minister.