Ex-Apogevmatini publisher sentenced over failure to pay staff

The former publisher of the Apogevmatini daily, Costas Sarantopoulos (photo), was handed a four-year-and-eight-month jail sentence by an Athens misdemeanors court on Wednesday for failing to pay his employees before the newspaper went out of business.

The court upheld a suit filed by 50 journalists who worked at Apogevmatini, who said they were not paid between July 2010 and November of that year, when the business folded.

Sarantopoulos can buy out his sentence for 10 euros a day, or a total of 17,000 euros.

He was also fined a further 29,000 euros.

Three other people, including his son, were cleared of all charges.