Evangelos Marinakis is suing Crystal Palace for defamation over a banner unveiled by the club's supporters last August that depicted the Nottingham Forest owner holding a gun to the head of England international Morgan Gibbs-White. Marinakis' lawyers lodged the claim in the High Court on Monday, naming CPFC Limited and "persons unknown" as defendants.
The banner appeared midway through the first half of Palace's 1-1 draw with Forest at Selhurst Park on 24 August 2025, and carried the message: "Mr Marinakis is not involved in blackmail, match-fixing, drug trafficking or corruption." Marinakis has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to those allegations.
The Football Association fined Palace £50,000 in February, after a regulatory commission ruled the club had failed "to ensure its spectators and/or supporters (and anyone purporting to be supporters or followers) didn't behave in an improper, offensive, abusive, insulting and/or provocative way at this match." Palace had argued in their defence that the banner's meaning could not be shown to be offensive and that sufficient checks had been carried out at the turnstiles; the commission disagreed, finding that Palace's own policy on smuggling banners into the ground proved it was aware of the risk.
The banner referenced Gibbs-White's stalled move to Tottenham the previous summer, when Spurs appeared to trigger his £60m release clause before the transfer fell through and he signed a new contract at Forest. The two clubs were also at odds over a complaint Forest made to Uefa that Palace's ownership breached the governing body's multi-club rules, a dispute that ended in Palace's relegation to the Conference League and Forest's promotion into the Europa League place they vacated.