The shipowner Panagiotis Laskaridis will sit in the dock of the Piraeus Trial Court tomorrow, Friday 18 November, regarding the case of the illegal lifting of antiquities in Antikythera in August 2020. Laskaridis is a member of the well-known shipowning family, whose relations with the newspaper «Proto Thema» and the company Zeus & Dione, which belonged to the wife of Prime Minister Mareva Mitsotakis-Grabovski, had been revealed by Documento.
According to information from documentonews.gr the shipowner is being prosecuted on a misdemeanour basis for the offences of damage to a monument and breach of the obligation to declare a monument. This is the case of the lifting of an ancient stone anchor and a cannon from the seabed of Antikythera, which was done without P. Laskaridis having received prior permission from the competent Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities of the Ministry of Culture, as expressly provided by the archaeological legislation and the UNESCO Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. For this case, which has caused a sensation when it was made public, the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities had forwarded a report on the irregularities found to the Athens Prosecutor's Office of the Athens Prosecutor's Office in order to be subsequently forwarded to the Piraeus Prosecutor's Office of the Piraeus Prosecutor's Office. A report on the incident had also been submitted by the Kythera Coast Guard.
The chronicle of the case
It all happened on the morning of August 12, 2020. The private yacht «Glaros», which according to P. Laskaridis' statement belongs to him and has occasionally contributed to the conduct of archaeological research, was found in the sea area of Antikythera where he lifted a cannon and a stone anchor. However, the process of lifting the historical objects was carried out without prior notification of the competent legal authorities, namely the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities and the Coast Guard, while the case was made public after an official complaint was filed by a traveller who observed the private boat and photographed the divers at the moment they were surfacing with the cannon.
Laskaridis' assumption about the salvage operation
The lifting had admitted the same P. Laskaridis Laskaridis with a letter to the archaeologist and former head of the Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities Angeliki Simosis on 17 August 2020, while it was communicated to the office of the Minister of Culture Lina Mendoni.
In this letter, the shipowner admitted that during his voyage to the bay of Pharos Apolytareis Antikythera, an «ancient anchor» was recovered, while he pointed out that there appeared to be many «broken ancient amphorae» in the same area.
Laskarides also admitted that an old cannon had been recovered from the port of Potamos in Antikythera. Both the stone anchor and the iron cannon had been transferred to the warehouses of Laskarides' company in Lavrio.
