Greece’s ambassador to Brazil Kyriakos Amiridis went missing on Monday in Nova Iguacu, a city just north of Rio de Janeiro, where he had been vacationing.

Mr Amiridis started his career as diplomat in 1985 in Athens and became Greece’s top diplomat in Brazil in 2016. He had previously served as Greece’s ambassador to Libya and worked as consul in Rio from 2001-2004.

On Friday, police investigator Evaristo Pontes Magalhaes said that 29-year-old police officer Sergio Gomes Moreira Filho murdered him.

Filho was having an affair with the ambassador’s 40-year-old wife, Francoise and confessed to killing Mr Amiridis, alleging self-defence.

Police, however, believe that the ambassador was killed by his wife’s lover under her orders in a house in the Rio area and have detained three suspects, AP reports.

Filho’s cousin, Eduardo de Melo, acknowledged taking part in the killing as a lookout, Mr Magalhaes said. The cousin accused Francoise of offering him the equivalent of $25,000 (£20,000) to participate.

Francoise has denied any role in the alleged plot but according to police “evidence clearly puts the ambassador’s wife as a co-author of the crime.”

“All our evidence suggests that her motivation was to use the financial resources left by the ambassador so she could enjoy life with Sergio,” the police officer, Mr Magalhaes said.

The first signs the ambassador had been murdered emerged late Thursday, when police found blood spots believed to be his on a sofa inside the house the couple kept in Nova Iguacu, where the wife’s family lives.

Filho told police that he strangled the ambassador during a fight, but the blood evidence found on the scene makes his claim unlikely.

The investigation showed that Amiridis’ body was removed from the house in a carpet at the same time that Francoise arrived with their 10 year-old daughter, who fortunately did not see the body of her dead father.

Brazil’s government has offered its condolences to Greece over Amiridis’ death.