Authorities in Rio de Janeiro suspect that Greece’s ambassador to Brazil was killed at the behest of his wife and a cop with whom she was canoodling, Brazilian TV reported Friday.
Kyriakos Amiridis’ corpse was found Thursday in a car that he and his wife had rented in a rough-and-tumble neighborhood on the outskirts of Rio.
The area where he was found is teeming with off-duty or retired police and firefighters, who are believed to often extort residents in exchange for keeping drug gangs from infiltrating the neighborhood, Reuters reported.
Rio investigators now suspect that Amiridis, 59 — who was missing since Monday night — was killed in a crime of passion by, or at the behest of, his wife, Françoise, and the police officer, Sergio Moreira, Globo TV reported Friday.
Amiridis had been on vacation with his family in Nova Iguacu, on Rio’s north side, since Dec. 21 and had been due to fly back to Brasilia on Jan. 9, a Greek Embassy official told Agence France-Presse.
Police were seen removing a bloody couch Friday from the rental apartment where the couple was staying in northern Rio.
Two other suspects were in custody, but were not yet identified, Globo reported.
It was not known if Françoise and Moreira had retained lawyers. The Greek Embassy in Brasilia and law enforcement authorities declined comment Friday.
In Athens, Greek Foreign Ministry spokesman Stratos Efthymiou also said the government had no comment.
The armed enforcers in crime-ridden Rio often curry favor with local politicians by promising to deliver votes from entire neighborhoods as long as authorities allow them to carry out their crimes.
Amiridis served as Greece’s consul general in Rio from 2001 to 2004. He was the ambassador to Libya from 2012 until he took the top Brazil post at the beginning of 2016.