Wife ‘told her lover to murder diplomat’
Police in Brazil believe that Greece’s ambassador to the country was killed by his wife’s lover under her orders.
Ambassador Kyriakos Amiridis went missing on Tuesday in Nova Iguacu, a city just north of Rio, where the ambassador had been vacationing. He and his wife lived most of the time in the capital, Brasilia.
Police investigator Evaristo Pontes Magalhaes said yesterday 29-year-old police officer Sergio Gomes Moreira Filho had confessed to killing Amiridis, alleging self-defence.
Magalhaes said Filho was having an affair with the ambassador’s 40-year-old Brazilian wife, Francoise Amiridis.
Filho’s cousin, Eduardo de Melo, had acknowledged taking part in the killing as a lookout, Magalhaes said. The cousin accused Francoise Amiridis of offering him the equivalent of US$25,000 to participate.
Francoise has denied any role in the alleged plot and says she was not at home at the time of the murder, but Magalhaes said the ‘‘evidence clearly puts the ambassador’s wife as a co-author of the crime’’.
He said Francoise started plotting with Filho to kill the ambassador after the couple had a serious fight three days before Christmas.
‘‘All our evidence suggests that her motivation was to use the financial resources left by the ambassador so she could enjoy life with Sergio.’’
Magalhaes said a judge had ordered the temporary arrest of Francoise, Filho and his cousin.
The first signs that the ambassador had been murdered emerged on Friday, when police found blood spots believed to be his on a sofa at the house the couple kept in Nova Iguacu, where the wife’s family lives.
Filho told police that he strangled the ambassador during a fight, but the blood evidence found at the scene made his claim unlikely, Magalhaes said.
Neighbours said they did not hear any shots, leading police to believe that Filho stabbed Amiridis.
The investigation showed that Amiridis’s body was removed from the house in a carpet at the same time Francoise arrived with their 10 year-old daughter, who did not see the body of her dead father, Magalhaes said.
Police believe that a body found in a burned-out car, which Amiridis had rented on December 21, belongs to the ambassador, but forensics experts are still working to confirm that it is him.
Brazil’s government has offered its condolences to Greece over his death.