SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Greece’s ambassador to Brazil has been missing for three days, and Rio de Janeiro state police said there was still no sign of the diplomat as of Thursday night.
Ambassador Kyriakos Amiridis, 59, was last seen Monday evening leaving the home of friends of his Brazilian wife in a poor and violent suburb of Rio’s metropolitan area, the police said.
A Rio state police official said the ambassador’s wife reported him as missing on Wednesday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the case.
Rio police inspector Evaristo Pontes told the Folha de S.Paulo newspaper that he does not believe the ambassador was kidnapped.
“We’re following some leads, but not that one. If it had been (a kidnapping), those who took him would have made contact by now,” he said.
An official at the Greek Embassy in Brasilia would not confirm the ambassador was missing, saying only that he was on vacation in Rio and expected to return to Brasilia on Jan. 9.
Amiridis previously served as Greece’s consul general in Rio from 2001 to 2004.
More recently he was Greece’s ambassador to Libya from 2012 until he took the top Brazil post at the beginning of 2016.
Brazil’s Foreign Ministry said it had no comment on the case, other than to say it was being fully pursued by police.
In Athens, Greece’s Foreign Ministry had no comment.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Sao Paulo, Alonso Soto in Brasilia and George Georgiopoulos in Athens; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
