Greece’s creaky justice system finally adjudicated a high-profile case involving kickbacks and bribery by Siemens’ subsidiary in the country to win state contracts, with convictions handed down against 22 defendants, including the German multinational’s former CEO in Athens, Michalis Christoforakos.
A prosecutor’s investigation into the case began 14 years ago, with the court proceedings taking years once an indictment turned into actual felony and misdemeanor charges, ranging from active bribery, passive bribery and money laundering. The first accusations and press coverage dated to 1998.
In the meantime, Christoforakos fled the country for Germany, where he is also a citizen. An extradition request by Greek authorities was subsequently turned down by a Munich court, with one of the reasons being that the former Siemens Hellas executive was convicted on similar charges in that country.
Another conviction was handed down against Christos Karavelas, a former company official and trade unionist with the one-time state-run telephone utility in Greece, OTE, who also fled the country for South America, according to past media reports. Other convictions were handed down against a pair of former executives of the parent company, Jörg-Michael Kutschenreuter and Reinhard Siekaczek.
A top aide to former prime minister Costas Simitis (1996-2004), Theodoros Tsoukatos, also faced money laundering charges for accepting one million deutschmarks from Siemens. In repeated statements and in court testimony, Tsoukatos claimed he merely accepted the money as a donation to then ruling PASOK party, which he duly turned over the party’s fund.
His defense against the indictment nevertheless proved a moot point, as the charged was dropped due to an expiration of the statute of limitation.
In fact, several felony charges were subsequently downgraded to misdemeanors, which were also automatically written off due to lower statutes of limitation. Several of the initial defendants have also died since the indictment was first filed.
A series of bribery charges dealing with the private sector were also dropped, following a recommendation by the relevant prosecutor, who cited the July 2019 revisions in Greece’s penal code, which was passed by a slim Parliament majority in the last days of the previous SYRIZA government.
Five defendants were cleared of all charges.
The first indictment included 64 defendants.
