In a shocking revelation for tourists during the ongoing holiday season, numerous bars in a popular Greek town have been shut down for allegedly collecting unfinished drinks and reselling them to other patrons.
The crackdown occurred in Kavos, located on Greece’s Corfu Island, where bars were recently subjected to a joint operation by tax and customs inspectors along with the police. Investigations revealed that 26 catering businesses failed to issue receipts for transactions amounting to a total of $286,782, equating to at least 40,578 missing receipts.
Suspicion of Illicit Alcohol
But what alarmed tourists further was the discovery that seven catering businesses were serving drinks without batch numbers, hinting at the possibility of the beverages being illicit, and potentially adulterated.
Local vendors corroborated stories about a typical practice in these bars where bartenders would collect unfinished drinks in tin cans and store them in barrels, only to be served again as shots to other customers. As a result of these findings, the implicated establishments were closed for 48 hours and penalized.
The state news agency claimed that Kavos, known as a popular party destination for tourists, has been informally considered a “no-go zone,” implying that it had been devoid of any checks or oversight for years.
This scrutiny followed local authorities launching an investigation potentially linked to the death of a young tourist after possibly consuming such alcohol in the region.
22-year-old British police officer, Hannah Byrne, was tragically found dead in the streets of Kavos in the early hours of Friday. While authorities believe she died from a fall resulting in head trauma, Corfu’s chief medical officer, Yannis Aivatidis, told Sun that he detected an alcohol scent on her breath. Aivatidis questioned how she could have died “just a few hours after” arriving in the area, commenting that the answers lie in the forthcoming toxicology tests. (Sözcü)
