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ATHENS – The Greek news site Documento that has reported on phone bugging and spyware scandals was hacked after publishing an investigation into convicted Turkish fraudster Yasam Ayavefe’s wife .
He had obtained a Greek Golden Visa that provided him residency and a Greek passport, the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) reported earlier, which then saw that site struck with a cyberattack.
Balkan Insight said that Documento’s two websites, including Koutipandoras were subjected to distributed denial-of-service DDoS cyber-attacks that shut down their serves and caused connection problems.
That happened on Feb. 13, a day after the publication of a new report on Yasam Ayavefe’s wife and her connections to the Greek underworld, with other media reports in Greece said has connections with corrupt police.
Earlier, Balkan Insight and Greek media outlets Solomon and Inside Story reported how Ayavefe was awarded honorary Greek citizenship in 2022 after a 2017 conviction for defrauding online gamblers in his home country, and a 2019 arrest in Greece while trying to cross the border into Bulgaria on a false Greek passport.
Journalist Marios Aravantinos revealed that a Greek criminal organization issued Ayavefe’s wife a fake ID, the report added, saying the false documents are provided by the Greek mob to people from Albania or former Soviet Union countries tied to criminal activity.
The case was reported to the authorities in December 2021 but Ayavefe was still granted honorary citizenship, the report claimed.
“Documento is the fourth media outlet to come under attack after publishing news about this Turkish man. There is a pattern; whether the perpetrator is the same person remains to be proven. We express our concern,” Aravantinos told BIRN.
Greece is among the remaining European Union countries still offering Golden Visas to rich foreigners who want to buy residence and get valuable passports although the programs have been criticized for being open to criminal activity and money laundering.
