Socratis Kokkalis

Socratis Kokkalis (born May 27, 1939) is a Greek businessman. He is the Chairman, CEO and majority shareholder of Intracom Holdings, one of the largest multinational technology groups in South-Eastern Europe, and the Chairman and majority shareholder of Intralot S.A., the world's leading gaming technology supplier and lottery licenced operator. He is also the owner and President of Olympiacos CFP, a Greek football club and the President of the Kokkalis Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes education and training, culture and social welfare, medical research and information technology, and athletics, both in Greece and abroad.

Life

Socratis Kokkalis is the son of Petros Kokkalis, a Professor of Surgery at Athens University and minister for health in the Political Committee of National Liberation (the breakaway government established by the Communist Party of Greece) in Greece during the Greek Civil War of 1945-1949.

After the communist defeat in the civil war, he and his family left Greece as refugees. They lived for a brief time in Romania where he completed his studies, before settling in East Germany, where his father became a member of the Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute of Experimental Surgery.

Kokkalis was educated in physics and electronics in the universities of Berlin and Moscow before settling permanently in Athens, in 1965. In 1977, he established Intracom, a telecommunications equipment manufacturer and IT services provider. Apart from Intracom, he also established Intrasoft (1987), which was merged with Intracom in 2002, Intrakat (1992) and Intramet, which were later merged to form Intrakat, Intralot (1992), International International (1996), as well as a number of other companies in Greece and abroad. In 2005, Intracom was reformed to a holding company and its various activities where split to the newly-formed companies of INTRACOM Telecom (51% owned by the Russian SISTEMA Group), INTRACOM IT Services and INTRACOM Defense Electronics. In 2006, INTRACOM Holdings acquired hellas online, the first Greek ISP and a highly promising broadband telecommunications operator.

Today, INTRACOM Holdings Group has subsiriaries in 20 countries, employs more than 5700 people and provides its products and services to more than 60 countries around the world. Intralot S.A. has become the world's leading provider of state-of-the-art integrated gaming systems to lottery organizations worldwide, with subsidiaries and business offices around the globe.

Due to his very successful career, Kokkalis has always been in the spotlight and has found himself being accused of espionage and other crimes more than once. However, the Greek and German courts have acquitted him of all charges.

Kokkalis's was listed 421st[1] in the 2001 Forbes list, with an estimated fοrtune of $1.2 billion.