OM are going to PAOK Salonika on Thursday for the quarter-final second leg of the Europa League Conference. The Greek club is led by Ivan Savvidis, a sulphurous character.
It is a very special trip that awaits the Phocaeans in Thessaloniki. Between the desire to overthrow the result (OM won 2-1 in the first leg) and the coach’s threats to the Marseille supporters, the Olympian board got to know a man with a heavy reputation.
63-year-old Greek-Russian businessman Ivan Savvidis ($1.6 billion net worth) has owned PAOK Salonika since 2017. Founder of the Agrokom Group, whose assets include Russian tobacco company Donskoy Tabak , he holds a majority stake in the Port Authority of Thessaloniki and owns the news site ethnos.gr, among other companies. He also controls a number of hotels in northern Greece.
But that’s not all. Before all that, this oligarch served in the Soviet army and was a sergeant major. He then became a deputy of the Duma, the Russian parliament, in 2003 and was re-elected in 2007.
So much for the “soft” part of the character. Indeed, Ivan Savvidis, honorary citizen of Greece for his contribution to the development of relations between Russia and Greece, also has a somewhat darker image.
Last February, he was sentenced to 25 months in prison for entering a pitch in March 2018 with a pistol in his belt after a disallowed goal between PAOK and AEK Athens. If he did not use it, but threatened the referee. Savvidis had been banned for three years from Greek stadiums.