Greek newspaper publisher fined for Jewish ‘thief’ insult

A Greek newspaper publisher has been fined about £1,500 for an opinion piece in which the former president of the Athens Jewish community was called a “thief”.

Stefanos Chios was ordered to pay up by the Athens Court of Justice of First Instance after an op-ed in the Makeleio newspaper called Minos Moissis “a crude Jew who runs a loan-shark firm that has bought the debts of poor Greeks”.

The 2017 article said Moissis, co-founder of a banking and finance firm, “pretends to be our friend” but was “stealing our money through the back door”. 

The court said this was defamation, and that the paper “contributed deliberately to the reproduction of a rhetoric of hate against the Greek Jewry”.