GREECE Trends and Developments Contributed by: Ovvadias S. Namias, Vasileios Petropoulos, Ilias Spyropoulos and Emmanouil Apostolakis, Ovvadias S. Namias Law Firm
Penal Code and the Greek Code of Criminal Proce- dure subjects victims to a particularly time-consuming and costly process if they wish to exercise their rights and participate as parties in criminal proceedings. This raises particular concerns, especially in cases where there are multiple victims who have suffered limited damage and would be willing to participate in criminal proceedings, but the cost of their participa- tion would exceed the amount of damage they have suffered. Such cases usually concern criminal offenc- es of a financial nature (white-collar crime), such as embezzlement, fraud, breach of trust, forgery, capital market manipulation, etc. The absence of a respective institution, such as class action, acts as a deterrent to victims who wish to participate in criminal proceed- ings in such cases. Support of criminal prosecution in cases involving a large number of victims On the other hand, in contrast to certain foreign legal systems, such as that in Germany, the Greek Code of Criminal Procedure does not prohibit the joint repre- sentation of multiple parties in the context of criminal proceedings – whether these are victims of the offence (which is the category of interest here) or defendants. Consequently, in practice, and despite the absence of an explicit procedural provision, it is possible for several victims of the same criminal conduct to be represented by the same lawyer or law firm. Such an arrangement not only reduces the cost of representa- tion for each individual victim, but also contributes to ensuring a more coherent and co-ordinated advocacy of the victims’ interests, particularly in cases where the harm has occurred under identical or at least com- parable circumstances. This possibility is consistent with the general principle of the free choice of counsel in criminal proceedings and does not infringe upon any procedural rules governing conflicts of interest, provided that the individual interests of the victims do not diverge. Furthermore, the joint filing of a criminal complaint and a declaration of participation in support of the prosecution by multiple victims of the same criminal conduct, represented by common counsel, offers sev- eral significant advantages.
• It allows the criminal court to conduct a compre- hensive investigation and deliver a unified assess- ment of a broader criminal conduct involving mul- tiple victims within a single criminal proceeding. In this way, the fragmentation of the case into several separate proceedings is avoided, where each vic- tim would otherwise have to establish individually the commission of the offence against them. • Moreover, this approach facilitates a consistent evaluation of the evidence, reduces the risk of contradictory judgments, and contributes to the efficiency of the proceedings, both for the victims and the court. In practice, joint representation prevents the dilution of the victims’ claims and ensures that offences affecting a large number of individuals are properly assessed in terms of their total impact. The issue of repeat offences pursuant to Article 98 of the Greek Penal Code This approach is particularly advantageous in the con- text of repeat offences, as the comprehensive assess- ment of the total value of the object and the total dam- age or benefit supports the practical and coherent joint representation of multiple victims within a single proceeding. According to Article 98 (1) of the Greek Penal Code, a repeat offence occurs when several similar acts are committed at different times by the same perpetrator, connected by the unity of execu- tion of the criminal decision. That is, the perpetrator commits multiple acts that differ in time and are inde- pendent of each other, but that all affect the same legal interest. The individual acts of a repeat offence may be carried out in the same or in different ways. Pursuant to Article 98 (2) of the Penal Code, the value of the object of the act and the damage to assets, or the benefit in the form of assets deriving from the repeated commission of the criminal offence, will be taken into consideration in their entirety if the per- petrator aimed for this outcome through their partial acts. In such cases, the penal character of the act is determined on the basis of the total value of the object and the total damage to assets or total benefit in the form of assets derived from the offence which may have occurred or was intended.
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