Answer of ESAP to AEK

TO

The union of AEK Athens Marousi August 14, 2023

Mister President,

“After first conveying the pain and disgust, on the part of ESAP and all its member unions, for the brutal murder of the AEK fan in the sad events of last Monday, which we unequivocally condemn, also expressing our support for the mourning of AEK and of all Greek sports, allow us after a reasonable period of time has passed since the above incident to reply to you as follows regarding your letter of 03/08/2023.

1) ESAP, as you must have known as a former member, is not a control mechanism, but a professional association and organizing authority of the A1 National Category men’s volleyball championship. In its above capacity its sole purpose is to organize a professional volleyball league with ten strong, reliable, solvent and competitive teams.

Only in this way can the prestige of one of the three professional leagues of the country be maintained, only in this way can it attract the interest of the sports fans, the

television and its sponsors, only in this way can it justify every euro that the State entrusted to ESAP and its member unions from the taxation of games of chance and betting.

2) In the 2019/2020 season, your association, as already a member of ESAP, due to their debts to athletes and coaches, not only did not submit a declaration of participation in the championship, but not even a licensing file to the licensing committee of ESAP and the Professional Sports Committee (!). The result of the above was that the 2019/2020 championship was held with ten instead of eleven teams with a huge (positive and negative) loss for the cooperative, which professional volleyball is still “paying” for…

Consequently, ESAP is obliged not to repeat the same mistake, especially as this year your group is under registration and not already a member of our cooperative.

3) Since last March, when it was again promoted to the A1 National category, your association was well aware of its obligations to repay the

of his debts to athletes and coaches.

Some of them result from announced claims through confiscations and assignments to ESAP, already in the 2018/2019 period (around 170,000 euros).

Some other confiscations (one of which was for 55,000 euros in the hands of ESAP last June), but also complaints about outstanding final decisions, the

which, only in the last two months (sixth and seventh 2023) reached the amount of 250,000 euros.

However, although officially and through your representatives, you requested and were granted extensions of their settlement (from 29 May to 30 June and from 30

June for July 31, 2023) you have not provided, until today, August 7, 2023, not a single payment of debt, nor – even one – certificate of its settlement.

4) Instead, and after exhausting every deadline granted to you in good faith by us, you finally ‘remembered’ your ‘known’ argument from the past (2019), about the sole competence of the Professional Sports Committee, as if your registration in the cooperative to be the same thing as the acquisition of your certificate of participation in the championship(!)

5) It is a ‘monument’ of contradiction, if not of taunting and undeniably unprecedented anti-cooperative behavior in the annals of Greek professional volleyball, on the one hand that your representatives attend the meetings of the ESAP Board of Directors, accept all positions of the cooperative, agree in them, to ask for successive deadlines for your response to your obligations and in the end to … remember the Professional Sports Committee and ignore us. And all this, while in all the meetings of the Board of Directors of ESAP, all the TAA unanimously emphasized to the representatives of AEK that >, of course with the stipulated conditions.

In addition to what the co-signer of your letter, General Secretary of AEK, told us on May 29, 2023, that is, until June 30, 2023, not only will

had settled all the union’s debts, but also that, in a different case, he personally and in his institutional capacity “committed” to us

informed that AEK would not come down to compete in the championship.

With your specific (official and representative) attitude, you create clear indications that your intention was not to settle or pay off your obligations, but to create a justifying basis and communication barriers to avoid them!

5) Of course in your unanswered letter you talk about anything else, apart from the essence of the matter, which has to do with whether as a candidate member of a

professional league:

a/ It is forbidden to operate to the detriment of the cooperative and its other members, as this (loss) is inevitably created (especially towards third-party sponsors,

radio and television providers etc) from the accumulated assignments and confiscations in the hands of a cooperative of which you ‘require’ (!) to become a member again,

b/ It is forbidden to ratify your association’s registration and transfer contracts (thus making a team to compete, but also to submit them to the EEA to receive a certificate of participation in the championship) as long as final decisions of financial dispute resolution committees, articles 95 et seq. Law 2725/1999.

c/ It is forbidden to be licensed, as a TAA foundation, as well as to receive a certificate of your participation in the TAA championship if you do not previously pay off your debts in order (and with a report-certification of sworn accountants in both cases) to be judged to have the relevant financial and management ‘sustainability’.

d/ It is strongly possible, if not certain, that with such amount of debts and with a multitude of active assignments and confiscations, on the one hand you cannot receive sponsorships and on the other hand the already imposed by final decisions (see no. 21/2019 MPDO ESAP ) points deduction penalties will increase, resulting in your club (even if it still manages to participate) being completely NON-competitive against the other clubs in overall league match damage.

e/Finally, it becomes highly probable, if not certain, that with such an abundance of debts, seizures, assignments and unexecuted final decisions, your union

will not participate, not even in the 2023/2024 championship, just as it happened in the 2019/2020 season, with a huge, respectively competitive and financial loss for us as

was predicted.

6) We emphasize to you, once again, so that it becomes clear and understandable, that acting as a responsible organizing authority and not as a control mechanism, as

unfortunately you call us, the EARLY knowledge both on our part as the organizer, and of the Sports Federation (EOPE) on whether you really want and – above all – if

you can participate, especially in this year’s championship, is an inescapable necessity, as there is an express legal obligation to participate

a certain number of groups, so that it becomes legally possible for TAA and ESAP to participate in the distribution of revenues from gambling taxation.

In this eventuality, in addition to the corresponding damage caused (competition, sponsorship, television) in the then championship (2019/2020), this year’s will be even greater, as the structure of the categories, the number of relegated and promoted teams, per category and all related issues, are done by each (responsible and serious, we repeat) organizing authority, on time and within the current period, through announcements provided for by law and regulations and not on the “foot” whenever they see fit and according to the necessities and possibly the….purposes of each, potentially participating, association If all of this leaves you indifferent as a candidate association-member of our cooperative, they oblige us as a cooperative to take them seriously – and above all IN TIME – into consideration.

In any case and because no one forbade you or forbids you to pay or settle your obligations (which you yourself admit and

recognize) in order to become, not a cooperatively harmful and competitively weak, but an equal and competitive member of ESAP with the rest of the unions

and of the championship, we are here to accept you following any new, even premature, application for registration, which, as is understood, will

accompanied by the required settlements or payments.

This, in fact, must also be done, of course and as stated, within a time frame in which you will be able to form a legally existing and licensed TAA, an economically viable, viable and competitive team to participate in the championship, as well as, as was emphasized to you expressly provided for in the law, as long as the final decisions of the Commissions of Article 95 of Law 2725/99 remain outstanding, registration or transfer of athletes is not allowed.

Moreover, the Professional Sports Committee is and will remain in its position to grant you a certificate of your participation in the championship as

member of ESAP, as long as you meet the legal requirements.

However, in the event that you do not have them and all of this is done to justify and impress, be aware that you will be held responsible for both the damage and

you challenge in this year’s (2023/2024) championship, as well as the one you challenged in the 2019/2020 championship, both of which expressly

we reserve both as ESAP, and individually as our member associations (now and then) that any positive and consequential damages are sought against you.

Until then, we invite you to ‘avoid’ henceforth objections, claims and characterizations against ESAP and our member associations, which on the one hand do not correspond to reality and on the other hand are put forward to fulfill communicative purposes only.

Otherwise, be aware that ESAP also has the ability to defend against anyone any legal right of itself and its member associations and at the level of defamatory behavior) seeking, as previously stated, the redress of any form of damage to it as the one, which you already have and given by your entire attitude and behavior, but you continue to provoke”.

The president and CEO of ESAP