By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Panathinaikos owner Dimitris Giannakopoulos posted a lengthy post on his official Instagram profile, “attacking” EuroLeague CEO Jordi Bertomeu.
Giannakopoulos’ post comes some hours following the publication of what was said during Bertomeu’s Friday meeting with media and the comments the EuroLeague CEO did regarding Giannakopoulos‘ dispute with the competition.
Panathinaikos‘ side considers Bertomeu’s comments to be against the “ceasefire” called between the two sides during the Final Four.
Giannakopoulos’ Instagram post is as follows:
The CEO of Euroleague has been telling everybody that he follows the rules and regulations. I really wonder which rules give him the right to negotiate the following? 20 days ago Pavlos, Thanassis and I asked Manos Papadopoulos to inform Mr.Bertomeou that due to his lack of respect towards Panathinaikos and our family we have decided to leave Euroleague and we were ready to issue a formal statement…
He asked us to not go ahead and that he would do anything possible to have Panathinaikos stay. We told him that he should remedy all ridiculous sanctions and revoke all his defamatory statements concerning members of our family…He agreed and said that this will be done right after the final four…Although we did not trust him, we thought that we should give him the chance to take back his ridiculous mistakes in order for Panathinaikos to continue competing amongst the best teams of Euroleague. He told us not to communicate and not to protest against the newly issued sanctions ( yes in the last ten days we have been sanctioned with another 410 thousand euros !!!! and one more year of a ban from the arenas) because he will take them back and issue a corrective statement about our family. He also asked us to give him the room to have a quiet final four and he will remedy all his mistakes.
The public interview with new defamatory statements about members of our family that he made to the media this morning shows that next to all the rest he is also a compulsive liar…Do the rest of the clubs know that you were using the sanctions as negotiating power ??? Is this legal ???OF COURSE JORDI THERE IS PROOF FOR ALL THIS”