GREECE Law and Practice Contributed by: Petros Machas, Dimitris Zanganas and Katerina Chrysi, Machas & Partners
• the acquisition, possession or use of property with knowledge of its criminal origin; and • the use of the financial system, including the place - ment or transfer of proceeds, in order to give them the appearance of legitimate origin. Money laundering is generally regarded as a derivative offence, as it involves the concealment or disguise of the illicit origin of proceeds, rather than constituting the primary criminal conduct itself. Pursuant to Article 4 of the same law, predicate offences encompass both specifically listed offences and, more broadly, any criminal offence punishable by a custodial sentence of at least three months from which financial benefit is derived. Indicative examples include participation in a criminal organisation, brib - ery and corruption offences, fraud and embezzlement, tax evasion and customs offences, forgery, as well as financial and market-related crimes such as market manipulation and insider trading. No prior conviction for the predicate offence is required to establish a money laundering offence. Sanctions vary depending on the seriousness of the predicate offence and the circumstances of the case, whether the underlying offence constitutes a felony or a misdemeanour. Penalties include imprisonment as well as monetary fines. Law 4557/2018 also imposes anti-money laundering (AML) compliance obligations on a range of obliged entities, including credit and financial institutions, insurance undertakings and certain professionals such as lawyers and notaries. These obligations include, inter alia, customer due diligence procedures, risk assessment mechanisms, ongoing staff training, record-keeping requirements, internal controls, and systems for monitoring transactions to detect and report suspicious activity. The Hellenic Anti-Money Laundering Authority is responsible for collecting and assessing relevant information within its administra - tive competence and forwarding cases to the Public Prosecutor. Failure to comply with AML obligations may result in administrative and, under certain conditions, criminal liability. Sanctions include administrative fines, sus -
pension or revocation of licences, exclusion from cer - tain activities, and potential criminal liability of natural persons, particularly in cases of intentional failure to report suspicious transactions. Supervisory authori - ties, such as the Bank of Greece and the Hellenic Cap - ital Market Commission, exercise broad oversight and enforcement powers. In addition, companies listed on the Athens Stock Exchange are subject to corporate governance obligations under Law 4706/2020, includ - ing the establishment of internal control systems, risk management policies and whistle-blowing mecha - nisms. Although there is no general requirement for all com - panies to implement a standardised compliance programme, in regulated sectors the absence of an adequate AML framework may lead to significant regulatory consequences. 3.4 Financial Services Crime In Greece, the regulation of so-called stock exchange offences – namely market abuse offences – is struc - tured through a framework of European and national rules aimed at ensuring the proper functioning of regu - lated markets and, more broadly, capital markets. This framework includes rules governing financial instru - ments and their markets (MiFID I, MiFID II, MiFIR), as implemented into Greek law through specific statutes (notably Laws 3606/2007 and 4514/2018), as well as rules on the prevention of market abuse (MAD, MAR), with corresponding national implementation (Laws 3340/2005 and 4443/2016). At the same time, these rules are distinct from, yet operate alongside, com - pany law, accounting law and capital markets law, which regulate corporate and financial activity more generally. More specifically, Law 4443/2016 provides for the criminalisation of insider trading offences (Articles 28–29), namely the use of inside information by per - sons in possession of such information in order to carry out transactions in financial instruments within the market, thereby infringing the principle of equal access of investors to information. It also criminalises the unlawful disclosure of inside information (Article 30), that is, the disclosure of specific, non-public infor - mation relating directly or indirectly to issuers or finan - cial instruments which could affect their price, as well
78 CHAMBERS.COM
Powered by FlippingBook