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Nottingham Forest’s next owner is tipped to be a man currently on police bail over allegations of systemic match-fixing – and there is nothing fans or even the Football League can do about it.

The Daily Mirror revealed in May that Forest’s owner Fawaz Al-Hasawi is in talks over the sale of the two-times former European champions to Evangelos Marinakis, a Greek shipping magnate.

Marinakis is also the owner of perennial Greek champions Olympiacos, who won their 18th domestic title in 20 years this season with six games to spare.

But that success has been soured by a criminal investigation in Greece that has named Marinakis as a ringleader of a match-fixing conspiracy known as The System, which has allegedly destroyed the Greek football landscape.

He denies wrongdoing.

(Image: Getty)

In June 2015, Marinakis was banned from all football activity after being bailed for €200,000 over five charges.

They were:

· Establishing and directing a criminal organisation

· Fraud

· Attempted extortion

· Bribery with the aim of fixing matches and

· Instigating an explosion endangering human life

Marinakis has been among dozens of football officials under investigation, including a former president and legal adviser of the Greek FA, referees and club owners.

He is contesting the charges and is appealing the right of the prosecutor to sit in judgement of him because he is “a well-known Panathinaikos fan”.

It’s the 11th petition against this prosecution by defendants in the case - the previous ten all failed.

However, whatever the courts’ final decision, there might be nothing the Football League can do to prevent his takeover.

The Football League Owners and Directors’ Test disqualifies those with an “unspent conviction” for corruption, fraud or perverting the course of justice in a court in England & Wales.

This is extended worldwide for those who receive custodial sentences of 12 months or more.

(Image: Getty)

But there is no bar to those on police bail accused of such offences taking over Football League clubs since they have not yet been convicted.

That is a major concern for English football, because even though there is no final judgement in the case against Marinakis, chaos has reigned in Greek football in recent years.

Fans of rival clubs frequently riot over the suspicion of dodgy decisions involving Olympiacos, causing gates to plummet in the Greek Super League.

At the same time as the allegations of criminally controlling affairs in Greek football are levelled against Marinakis and his fellow suspects, UEFA have sent details of 30-plus suspicious Greek Super League matches to the Hellenic Football Federation.

However, the HFF’s ethics committee has declined to investigate it any further.

While Marinakis denies the charges against him, one man’s ­livelihood has certainly been destroyed.

Former referee Petros Konstantineas weeps when he tells of how he was driven out of the game.

Known as Crazy Wolf when he officiated in the Greek Super League, he was highly rated and made the FIFA list of international referees when in his early 30s.

Then it all went wrong.

(Image: Action Images / Matthew Childs)

Given responsibility for a vital fixture in 2012, he says he was also told what the result was to be.

“I said, ‘I’m the wrong man for the job’,” said Konstantineas. “I told them the best and the luckiest team would win. I understood then something really wrong was happening at the Greek Football Federation. But I also knew I was trapped. I had to... or my career was finished.”

But Konstantineas – who also worked as a baker – refused to follow the match-fixers’ orders.

He said: “After the game when I went to the hotel I was threatened, ‘You’re finished, you’re this, you’re that, that’s the end of you’.

“A bomb was placed in my bakery and it exploded in the middle of the night. My business was destroyed instantly – 10 cars were damaged outside. It was nightmarish.

“This had never happened in my town before. Even the police inspector was shocked. The bomb exploded at 1.20am, and I had planned to go to work at 3am, which is typical for a baker. It was only sheer luck that no one was injured.”

Marinakis is on police bail, accused of having ordered that bombing as a ringleader of The System. He rejects the ­allegations.

Konstantineas got out of football and became an MP for Syriza, the ruling party in Greece.

(Image: Getty)

But many others who remain involved in the game feel crushed by the weight of the alleged corruption.

Yiannis Alafouzos is the owner of Greece’s second-biggest club, Panathinaikos.

He said: “The System are controlling and conducting which teams go up or go down, disciplinary decisions, who will be punished, who will be prosecuted by the football authorities, which referee will be appointed to a game. All this is done for profit financially and ­football success or getting a team relegated so a friendly team can come up.

“They fix games to ­relegate certain clubs and save others, and for betting purposes.

“In addition to that is the money given through Super League TV rights, which is the carrot to make smaller teams participate in the cartel. Then they exchange players between themselves on loan.”

Evangelos Aslanidis, chief executive of the 2016 Greek Cup winners AEK Athens, agrees.

He said: “This System means even before the play has started you know what will happen at the end of the final act – shamelessly and without any caution.”

Lawrie Sanchez told the BBC about his time as manager of Apollon Smyrni in the 2013-14 season.

(Image: Getty)

The Wimbledon FA Cup final hero said: “Every ­conversation around the dinner table about football ultimately ended up with, ‘That player fixed that game or this player fixed this game’. Teams would have ­unbelievable runs far in excess of their ability and far in excess of what any manager could do.”

Two criminal inquiries saw more than 100 people – referees, ­disciplinary officials, the Greek FA, club owners and executives – charged. One of the most prominent of them is Marinakis.

He denies the charges.

The Football League and Forest declined to comment.

* EVANGELOS MARINAKIS has friends in high places.

Savvas Theodoridis, vice-president of Champions League-qualified Olympiacos – which Marinakis owns – is the father of UEFA’s acting general secretary, Theodore Theodoridis.

As a former director of international relations at UEFA, Theodoridis is known in football’s corridors of power as a kingmaker.

He was instrumental in getting Michel Platini elected as president of UEFA and his old boss Gianni Infantino as FIFA’s president in February.

(Image: Getty)

Panathinaikos and PAOK Salonika challenged Olympiacos being allowed to play in to the Champions League last June.

Infantino said: “When I – as general secretary of UEFA – received the Olympiacos case, I gave it to the ethics disciplinary body. They looked into the matter and decided there’s not enough evidence and have provisionally accepted Olympiacos.

“In Greece there is an investigation into the president of the club. That’s all. There is no conviction, no decision, not enough.”

Unlike with the Football League’s owners and directors’ test, a conviction is not necessary for UEFA to ban clubs from the Champions League under its rules.

Regulations state that if European football’s governing body concludes to its “comfortable satisfaction that a club has been involved in any activity aimed at arranging or influencing the outcome of a match, UEFA will declare such club ineligible to participate”.