Today, Vassilis Papageorgopoulos asked to leave the cell he shares with eight more men and move to another one.
The rest of the prisoners were smoking and he could not stand it anymore.
Vassilis Papageorgopoulos was led to prison just yesterday. He's the former Mayor of the city of Thessaloniki and he was sentenced to life imprisonment for embezzlement of public money totaling 18 million euros.
His lifelong conviction shocked public opinion as it's the first such harsh punishment imposed on Greek political misuse of public money. But the amount of money is huge and judges didn't recognize any mitigating factor.
Vassilis Papageorgopoulos became popular as an athlete. He was many times the champion of 100 meters in Greece and Balkan and three times in Europe.
In 1976, he was flag bearer at the Olympic Games in Montreal and two years later he entered politics first time.
After three years as a municipal counselor, he was elected and kept on being elected as a member of the Parliament House for 15 years.
It was his decision to leave the House to claim the Municipality of Thessaloniki and he managed to keep on being elected for 14 years.
Although rumors about misuse on public money went on for ages, citizens of Thessaloniki loved him.At that time,the general idea in Greece was that "all politicians steal" so it didn't matter until economic crisis broke.
Currently, there are 40 more cases of corruption in Municipalities under the microscope of the investigating authorities.
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