GREECE Law and Practice Contributed by: Ilias Anagnostopoulos and Alexandros Tsagkalidis, Anagnostopoulos
6.5 Incentives Provided to Whistle-Blowers There are no financial incentive schemes for whistle- blowers. 7. Enforcement Trends 7.1 Enforcement Enforcement of anti-bribery and anti-corruption law is mainly criminal and administrative. 7.2 Enforcement Bodies Role of the Prosecutor’s Office Prosecution is always initiated by the Prosecutor’s Office. There is one Prosecutor’s Office for every first-instance court (which roughly covers a prefec - ture). There are also prosecutors with the Court of Appeal (12 circuits), and there is a prosecutor with the Supreme Court. An investigation is always supervised by a prosecutor. The majority of cases are handled by prosecutors of the first-instance court (who may receive guidelines or orders for specific investigations from their superiors). In exceptional cases, a prosecu - tor with the Court of Appeal may step in and conduct or co-ordinate the proceedings. In recent years, the Prosecutor of Economic Crime has been established (Articles 33–36 of Greek Code of Criminal Procedure) with powers to prosecute and supervise investigations of financial fraud, criminal tax offences, and financial and economic crimes against the state, state-owned entities or of broader public interest. The above-mentioned prosecutor is a higher-ranking Court of Appeal prosecutor and may request the co- operation of public prosecutors with the first-instance court, the police, the regulatory authorities, other administrative authorities and/or other enforcement agencies in the course of their investigations. Role of Other Enforcement Agencies Other enforcement agencies act in co-operation with and under the orders of the prosecutor(s). It is most common for the Economic and Financial Crime Unit to do the necessary preliminary investigations, evidence- gathering, report-writing, etc, following a prosecutorial order. In cases of money laundering, the Hellenic FIU gathers all the necessary information and evidence, and if they believe that there is enough to support
a criminal case, they forward it to the Prosecutor’s Office. The prosecutor opens a case against the natu - ral persons or officers of an entity, following stand - ard criminal procedure – ie, conducting a preliminary investigation and opening a formal investigation (con - ducted by an investigating judge). The timeframe for executing these procedural steps varies depending on the nature of the case. It is not unusual in serious and complex cases (eg, corrup - tion, large-scale money laundering and fraud cases) for enforcement agencies and the prosecutor to take action in order to secure evidence (by issuing a war - rant for search and seizure, or issuing freezing orders), before the actual filing of charges and before persons of interest are called for questioning. On some occa - sions, regulatory bodies (eg, the Hellenic Capital Market Commission or the Competition Commission) conduct their investigations in respect of breach of regulations within their competence, and, if they also come across evidence of criminal conduct, they gather evidence and send a report to the prosecutor to decide on further steps. Regulatory bodies con - duct investigations (during which certain provisions for criminal investigations apply – ie, examination of witnesses, evidence-gathering, etc) but they cannot initiate criminal charges. This responsibility always lies with the prosecutor. In principle, it is the responsibility of the Prosecutor’s Office to decide which body inves - tigates under the prosecutor’s supervision, unless there are specific provisions by law (Prosecutor for Financial and Economic Crime). It is usual to have civil or administrative enforcement, either by means of the private pursuit of claims (eg, the civil claim of one entity or person against another) or by means of the law in cases of tax offences, subsi - dies fraud, money laundering, securities fraud, bribery and cartel offences. These measures are imposed by the competent agency according to the entity’s status (eg, the Capital Market Commission, the Revenue Ser - vice, special departments of the Ministry of Finance). As a general rule, the competent agency for imposing these types of sanctions is the one supervising the entity’s registration, licences, regulation, etc.
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