GREECE Law and Practice Contributed by: Petros Machas, Dimitris Zanganas and Katerina Chrysi, Machas & Partners
cally of at least six months or one year). The applica - tion is submitted to the court and must be supported by relevant documentation such as tax returns and income statements. Legal aid may also be granted in urgent “flagrante delicto” cases. The defence lawyer is appointed randomly from a list maintained by the local Bar Association, and their fees are covered by a special fund of the Ministry of Justice. 4.4 Venue and Specialisation The subject-matter and territorial jurisdiction of crimi - nal courts under Greek criminal law is determined by the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Arti - cles 109–115). The allocation of jurisdiction is defined by the classification of the act by the Penal Code as a felony or a misdemeanour, based on the factual cir - cumstances contained in the referring decision or the prosecutor’s summons. Thus, apart from the Mixed Jury Courts, which pri - marily adjudicate offences against life or sexual free - dom, the remaining offences are allocated by law to the single-member and three-member misdemean - our courts and courts of felonies. The main financial offences, relating to property, assets, currency or means of payment – such as fraud, breach of trust, forgery, counterfeiting, bribery and money laundering – are adjudicated by three-member courts. Appeals against decisions are heard by higher courts as pro - vided by law (eg, decisions of the three-member misdemeanour court are heard by the three-member court of appeal). Territorial jurisdiction is determined by the place where the offence was committed. Among multiple compe - tent courts or investigating authorities acting in paral - lel, preference is given to those of the place where the offence was committed. If that place is unknown, preference is given to those who first summoned or ordered the arrest or pre-trial detention of the accused. These provisions are of mandatory law, and the sus - pect or accused cannot derogate from them, except where any objection of lack of jurisdiction is based on law, in which the case is referred to the appropriate court. Likewise, no choice between lower or higher
courts is left to the accused, who may only, if they consider that the lower court has wrongly assessed the evidence, lodge an appeal and bring the case before a second-instance court, or, if that decision contains legal errors or insufficient reasoning, file a cassation before the Supreme Court ( Areios Pagos ). 4.5 Trial by Jury Financial crimes are adjudicated exclusively by pro - fessional judges, as the law mandatorily assigns juris - diction over such offences to judicial panels without the participation of juries. Cases involving financial or administrative matters require specialised technical and legal expertise developed through extensive legal training and practice. Accordingly, white collar crimes are excluded from the jurisdiction of mixed juries due to their complexity for non-professional jurors, and this allocation of jurisdiction is binding by law, pre - cluding any objection by the suspect. 5. Corporate Liability, Compliance and Defences 5.1 Corporate and Individual Liability In the Greek legal order, criminal liability is, in principle, attributed only to natural persons and is centred on the responsibility of the company’s legal representa - tives. Accordingly, unlawful acts or omissions commit - ted for the benefit of a legal entity by persons holding a leading position and powers of representation (eg, members of the board of directors), or resulting from a failure of supervision over subordinates, give rise to criminal liability of the natural persons involved. Within corporate groups, liability is attributed to the representatives of the directly involved entity, while prosecution may extend to individuals of parent or affiliated companies where knowledge or participation (eg, aiding and abetting or instigation) is established. For most offences, liability of legal persons remains primarily administrative and may be imposed indepen - dently of any criminal conviction. However, in cases of bribery and trading in influence, Law 5090/2024 (Sec - tion 4.1) introduces a hybrid liability model, allowing for the parallel prosecution and sanctioning of both natural and legal persons. Sanctions imposed on legal entities may also be enforced against successor enti - ties, whether universal or special, up to the value of
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