While tourists crowded the beaches of Rhodes last summer, Greek police were quietly watching a different set of visitors.
For 118 days, from late May to mid-September, undercover officers photographed, tracked and logged the movements of people suspected of belonging to a criminal network built around Angelos Giannakopoulos, owner of the Horiatiko bakery chain.
Prosecutors say the network cheated the Greek state of more than 100 million euros, about $116 million, in unpaid taxes and social security contributions.
Their findings, part of a case file running to more than 4,000 pages and described in Greek media on Saturday, read at times like a spy novel set on a holiday island.
Officers recorded a man they call "the Boss" meeting his alleged front man on Rhodes, a 55-year-old local businessman, and appearing to swap envelopes.
They watched a 54-year-old associate with a criminal record slip into the passenger seat of a silver Volvo registered to an Athens company.
The surveillance report notes that the driver closely resembled a senior local government official, though it does not name him. Weeks later, a woman said to work in the network's Rhodes office was photographed walking into the island's town hall with a sheaf of papers. She left 10 minutes later.
Such details have sharpened a question now hanging over the case: whether the alleged fraud had help from inside the state.
This week, Greece's minister for citizen protection, Michalis Chrysochoidis, said the involvement of public officials could not be ruled out.
The Rhodes businessman insists the picture is innocent. In a written defense, he said he met Mr. Giannakopoulos at a chamber of commerce event in 2019. He said he later provided consulting and management services under contracts filed with tax authorities. Their frequent meetings, he said, were natural, since Mr. Giannakopoulos was on vacation on the island with his wife.
The case has gripped Greece since Mr. Giannakopoulos was arrested last Sunday near the Albanian border.
On Friday, 10 more suspects were jailed pending trial, and the police displayed what they had seized: luxury cars, Rolex watches, stacks of cash and jewelry worth half a million euros.
All of the suspects are presumed innocent.