Trial date for Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis’ High Court libel claim set

A trial date for Nottingham Forest FC owner Evangelos Marinakis’s High Court libel claim against a Greek football rival has been set.

Mr Marinakis, who also owns Greek side Olympiacos, is suing Eirini Karypidou, the chair of Greek Super League rivals Aris, over several “false” allegations, including that he had conducted match-fixing and was involved in a high-profile drug trafficking case in the country, which he denies.

He is also suing Israeli political consultant Ari Harow and his company, Sheyaan Consulting Limited, whom Mr Marinakis’s lawyers claim were involved in the “creation and implementation” of the “smear” campaign, which saw the allegations published on social media and online.

Lawyers for Ms Karypidou told a previous hearing that she paid an American PR firm 25,000 US dollars (£19,350), money loaned to her by a company of which she was president, to create the publications.

But Ms Karypidou is defending the legal action, including on the grounds that the allegations are true and in the public interest, with Mr Harow and Sheyaan Consulting also opposing the claim.

On Wednesday, Mr Justice Johnson ruled on several preliminary matters in the case, including the “natural and ordinary meaning” of the allegations at the heart of the claim and whether they were statements of fact or opinion.

In a 20-page judgment, the judge said Mr Marinakis is seeking between £1 million and £5 million in damages and claims the allegations against him had “caused him serious reputational harm”.

He continued that the publications had a defamatory meaning, but that his ruling “does not decide who will succeed in the claim, far less whether the claimant is guilty of the conduct alleged in the publications that form the basis of the claim”.

In a court order in April, Mrs Justice Steyn said that a 10-day trial of the claim had been scheduled to begin on 8 March, 2027.

Mr Justice Johnson said in his ruling that Mr Marinakis is suing over allegations made on a website, social media, and mobile billboards between November 2023 and March 2024, which he denies.

They included three articles published on a website called “nottinghamforestfire.co.uk” in November 2023.

Several posts were also published on X in December 2023, and six YouTube videos uploaded, including two titled “Marinakis Match Fixer” and “Marinakis Drug Smuggler”.

The allegations were also displayed on mobile billboards driven around Nottingham Forest’s stadium, the City Ground, on two match days.

The YouTube channel, X account and website were all later taken down.

In written submissions for a hearing in 2024, David Sherborne, for Mr Marinakis, said the “highly defamatory” allegations were “completely untrue”.

He said they included that Mr Marinakis was a “leader of a criminal organisation” and “guilty of match-fixing practices including extortion, fraud and arson”, among others.

Matthew Hodson, for Ms Karypidou, told the earlier hearing the social media campaign had “limited publication” and “fared pathetically”, and that there was no evidence of “actual harm” to Mr Marinakis’s reputation.

He continued that the dispute stemmed from an incident at a match between Olympiacos and Aris, which Ms Karypidou runs with her brother, Theodoros.

It was claimed that in the 2022-23 season, Mr Marinakis approached Mr Karypidou to fix a “critical” game between the teams so that Olympiacos would win.

Mr Karypidou refused, and the game ended 2-2, with Olympiacos, who had won the league in the previous three seasons, finishing the season in third place.

Mr Hodson said: “During the game, Mr Marinakis became so angry that, according to Ms Karypidou, he threatened that Theodoros ‘would not leave the field alive’ if Olympiacos lost.

“At the end of the game, Mr Marinakis then told Theodoros, ‘you are finished’ and ‘I will destroy you’.

“Thereafter, Mr Marinakis began a campaign of intimidation and interference with the lives and businesses of Ms Karypidou and her brother.”

He continued the claim is “wholly unexplained if not as revenge for the Aris (versus) Olympiacos game” and that the damages sought were “utterly disproportionate”.

A further hearing in the claim could take place later this year.