GREECE Trends and Developments Contributed by: Ovvadias S. Namias, Vasileios Petropoulos, Ilias Spyropoulos and Emmanouil Apostolakis, Ovvadias S. Namias Law Firm
Under Greek law, there is no legal obligation for com - panies (or groups of companies) to carry out internal investigations. The Greek Code of Criminal Procedure does not provide any information regarding the per - mitted or prohibited nature of private investigations. As a result, the area of corporate or intra-group inves - tigations in the Greek legal system can be regarded as a legal vacuum. However, it is accepted that the investigation of crimes is not exclusively granted to the state, which gives private internal investigations a permissible character. Conducting Internal Investigations in Greece There is still not a specific legal framework in Greece concerning the conduct of internal investigations and the Greek Code of Criminal Procedure does not pro - vide any information on the nature of (private) internal investigations. Therefore, there is a lack of standardi - sation of the procedure for both the collection and the recording of the investigative findings. It appears that an increasing number of criminal cases from Greek legal practice are based on material col - lected and evaluated by means of internal investiga - tions. Under the Greek legal system, investigations within the company can take place either voluntarily, after a Board of Directors’ (BoD) decision, or on the initiative of the state authorities. In the former case, the purpose of self-regulation is not to avoid criminal conduct, but to uncover and punish it later. In the latter case, certain public authorities, such as the Capital Market Commission in the case of listed companies, are permitted to commission private bodies, such auditing or legal firms, to carry out an internal inves - tigation. Of course, there is also the traditional route, ie, the internal investigation can be led by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which carries out the investiga - tions with the help of state authorities, such as the Financial Police, the Economic Crimes Department of the Tax Office, etc. Recent judicial practice has shown that conducting an internal investigation at an early stage of a criminal case is crucial for the effective gathering of evidence and a speedy trial. So, there are many benefits to this practice, not only for the company that commissions the internal investigation but also for the state, as fol - lows.
• First, an objective third party, with sufficient human resources, relevant expertise and appropriate means depending on the particularities of each case, collects and assesses the evidence in an effi - cient manner. In this way, it becomes clear from the outset whether or not there is sufficient evidence of the commission of a particular offence, and the referral of cases that have not been adequately processed in the pre-trial stage is thus avoided. • Prosecutors and investigative offices, as well as supervisory authorities, often lack the necessary resources to effectively pursue a complex criminal case. Therefore, conducting an internal investiga - tion either at the initiative of the company con - cerned or the Prosecutor’s Office would lead to savings of critical state resources, and would also prevent the risk of an incomplete investigation of the case. • The practice of internal investigations will help speed up all stages of the criminal procedure. This development would be beneficial on many levels for a country such as Greece, where there are seri - ous delays in the administration of justice. Importance of Internal Investigations Under the Greek Legal System The Greek legal system does not contain any specific provisions that focus on a reaction to the violations of rules that have already been committed with the aim of clarifying them and limiting their consequenc - es. However, that does not mean that the practice of internal investigations is foreign or unknown to the Greek legal order. First of all, new “general provisions” (Articles 381 and 405 of the Greek Criminal Code) were introduced into the Criminal Code, according to which, in some prop - erty crimes (ie, breach of trust and embezzlement), prosecution only occurs at the request of the injured party. These provisions concern the core of the mat - ter of economic criminal law. Despite the fact that a recent legislative amendment has redefined some of these crimes as ex officio prosecuted offences, many of their statutory forms continue to be prosecuted upon the filing of a criminal complaint. A company can also be considered an injured party. Legal entities can lodge criminal complaints and par -
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