GREECE Law and Practice Contributed by: Ilias Anagnostopoulos and Alexandros Tsagkalidis, Anagnostopoulos
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 Prosecu - tor’s Office. There is one Prosecutor’s Office for every first-instance court (which roughly covers a prefecture). There are also prosecutors with the Court of Appeal (12 circuits), and there is a pros - ecutor with the Supreme Court. An investigation is always supervised by a prosecutor. The major - ity 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 prosecutor with the Court of Appeal may step in and con - duct 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 econom - ic 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 regu - latory authorities, other administrative authori- ties 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 Finan - cial Crime Unit to do the necessary preliminary
investigations, evidence-gathering, report-writ - ing, 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 natural persons or officers of an entity, following standard criminal procedure – ie, conducting a preliminary investigation and opening a formal investigation (conducted 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, corruption, large-scale money laun - dering and fraud cases) for enforcement agen - cies and the prosecutor to take action in order to secure evidence (by issuing a warrant 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 occasions, regulatory bodies (eg, the Hellenic Capital Market Commission or the Competi - tion Commission) conduct their investigations in respect of breach of regulations within their competence, and, if they also come across evi - dence of criminal conduct, they gather evidence and send a report to the prosecutor to decide on further steps. Regulatory bodies conduct inves - tigations (during which certain provisions for criminal investigations apply – ie, examination of witnesses, evidence-gathering, etc) but they cannot initiate criminal charges. This responsibil - ity always lies with the prosecutor. In principle, it is the responsibility of the Prosecutor’s Office to decide which body investigates under the pros - ecutor’s supervision, unless there are specific provisions by law (Prosecutor for Financial and Economic Crime).
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