Businessman Panagiotis Koutsikos, Honorary Consul of El Salvador in Greece, spoke on Voice of Greece and the program “Our Global Voice” with Dimitris Kontogiannis about the social and economic situation in the most densely populated country of mainland Latin America, focusing on the drastic measures taken by President Nayib Bukele to confront gang violence.
Mr. Koutsikos noted that at least five people were being murdered every day before Bukele took office and referred to his own experiences from visits to El Salvador during that period. He also commented on the country’s adoption of bitcoin as legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar.
He added that roughly 500 Salvadoran citizens live in Greece, many of them women who married Greek seafarers. By contrast, he noted, there are no recorded Greek nationals living in El Salvador — a fact that, as he mentioned, helps explain why Greece had difficulty finding someone to serve as its Honorary Consul there.