For months, the police say, Angelos Giannakopoulos had a quiet way out of Greece.
Barred by court order from leaving the country, the owner of Horiatiko, one of Greece's best-known bakery chains, would drive north to the Albanian border, cross over and catch a flight to Dubai, according to a Greek news report citing people familiar with the investigation.
On Sunday, the police say, he tried it once too often.
Officers stopped Mr. Giannakopoulos in Ioannina, a lakeside city in the mountains of northwestern Greece, on what investigators believe was his road to Albania.
His arrest capped a sprawling operation into tax and social security fraud that the authorities estimate has cost the Greek state more than 100 million euros, or about $116 million.
More than 50 people have been arrested. Investigators are combing through a web of some 520 companies, many of them suspected shells fronted by straw men, figures listed on paper as owners or managers while others pulled the strings.
Searches are continuing in Athens and on the islands of Mykonos and Rhodes.
The police had intended to move last week, after wiretaps suggested that Mr. Giannakopoulos was returning from Dubai.
When they learned he was preparing to slip away again, they acted.
It is the second time in a week that a familiar Greek food brand has landed at the center of a fraud inquiry.
Days earlier, the police arrested 23 people linked to the Pizza Fan chain over what they described as an elaborate scheme to dodge sales tax. Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis seized on that case, declaring that "it's the big fish we're after."
Data from the tax authority is expected to show how deep the losses run.
All the suspects are presumed innocent.