Greek Ex-Defense Minister on Trial in Bribe Case Angeliki Panagiotou/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images Akis Tsochatzopoulos, a former defense minister of Greece, arrived for his trial on money-laundering charges in Athens on Monday. ATHENS - In the highest-profile criminal trial of a politician in Greece in more than two decades, a former defense minister, Akis Tsochatzopoulos, appeared in a court here on Monday charged with setting up a complex money-laundering network to cover the trail of millions of dollars in bribes he is accused of pocketing from government weapons purchases. Mr. Tsochatzopoulos, 73, a onetime Socialist heavyweight, is on trial with his wife, his daughter, and 16 former aides and associates accused of participating in the scheme. He, his relatives and five other suspects have been in custody at a high-security prison in Athens for a year. All but one of the 19 defendants pleaded not guilty. Nikos Zigras, a first cousin and onetime business partner and confidant of the former minister, pleaded guilty and apologized to the court, requesting "understanding and leniency." Mr. Tsochatzopoulos again denied the charges, which he said were "despicable," and he described the yearlong detention of himself and his relatives as "state violence." The trial was adjourned and is scheduled to continue on May 8, after Greek Orthodox Easter. Mr. Tsochatzopoulos and his wife, Vassiliki Stamati, who were transferred to the courthouse on Monday morning by a police bus, have been subjected to intense scrutiny as the living standards of ordinary Greeks have plummeted over three years of austerity. Dressed in a dark blue suit and clutching a file of documents, the white-haired minister held his head high as the police escorted him into the court building while Ms. Stamati, 50, a former assistant in his political office, appeared pale and drawn. The charges are highly unusual in a country where top-ranking state officials are rarely prosecuted. During his stint as defense minister from 1996 to 2001 and for several years after that, Mr. Tsochatzopoulos is accused of having used a network of offshore companies to siphon off millions of dollars in bribes in exchange for procurement contracts, including the purchase of a Russian missile-defense system and German submarines. According to prosecutors, around $210 million in bribes were paid for those two deals, which were worth an estimated $4 billion. Authorities have traced about $75 million. The former minister, a founding member of Pasok, once the country's dominant Socialist party and now part of a conservative-led coalition, claims his prosecution is politically motivated. He has called for members of a political and defense council that co-signed the contracts for the defense deals - including two former prime ministers, Costas Simitis and George A. Papandreou - to testify at his trial, which is expected to last several months. The request has been rejected by the judiciary, which said the bribery allegations, not the deals, were under scrutiny. Regardless of the outcome of his trial on money-laundering charges, which could result in a 20-year term behind bars, Mr. Tsochatzopoulos will not escape prison time. Last month he was sentenced to eight years in prison for concealing assets from the authorities, notably by failing to report the purchase of a neo-Classical town house near the Acropolis. The government of Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has vowed to crack down on corruption among the political elite, whom most Greeks blame for the dysfunctional state system that created the country's huge debt problem and led Greece to dependence on foreign rescue loans. In an unusually severe sentence in February, a court in Salonika, Greece's second-largest city, sentenced a former mayor, Vassilis Papageorgopoulos, to life in prison for embezzling at least $24 million from city coffers. In September, the Greek authorities began examining the bank accounts of more than 30 politicians to determine whether they should be charged with tax evasion and other crimes, and last month three former ministers were charged with submitting false income declarations. Mr. Tsochatzopoulos is the most senior government official to stand trial since Mr. Papandreou's father, the former prime minister and Pasok founder Andreas Papandreou, was acquitted in 1991 on charges of accepting bribes in return for forcing state companies to prop up a troubled private bank.