Giorgos Loukos

After eight years of being dragged through the courts, spending who knows how much money and having his reputation dragged through the mud, the former artistic director of what today is called Hellenic Festival SA - the company that organizes the Athens & Epidaurus Festival - was acquitted of all charges of financial mismanagement by an Athens court of appeals this week.

The former director of Greece's biggest annual cultural event was cleared on Tuesday of financial mismanagement charges by an appeals court in Athens.

Giorgos Loukos, who served as head of the Athens & Epidaurus Festival from 2006 until he was ousted in 2015, had been accused of over-charging the Greek state some 2.7 million euros between 2013 and 2014.

Greek Festival director Giorgos Loukos was surrounded by fresh faces at a recent press conference in Athens where he took the opportunity to introduce two new, albeit long-awaited, initiatives.

From music to theater and dance, the Greek Festival celebrates its 56th anniversary this summer. Founded in 1955 as the Athens Festival, its bar was set high right from the start, with Dimitris Mitropoulos leading the New York Philharmonic in one of the event’s curtain-raising performances. It has since hosted living legends including Maria Callas, Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn.