GREECE Trends and Developments Contributed by: Ovvadias S. Namias, Vasileios Petropoulos, Ilias Spyropoulos and Emmanouil Apostolakis, Ovvadias S. Namias Law Firm
Code) and false accusation (Article 229 of the Greek Criminal Code). At the same time, failure to lodge a criminal and/or civil complaint runs the risk that claims may be brought against the members of the Board under Article 102 of the Greek Companies Act, or even that criminal lia - bility for the offence of breach of trust (Article 390 of the Greek Criminal Code) may be incurred. In this case, an internal investigation by a law firm specialising in criminal law is a one-way street. Based on the findings and legal assessments of the final report, board members will act without the risk of incurring civil or criminal liability. It thus turns out that the investigator’ s final report is important in two respects: • for the prosecution of potential criminal offences within the company; and • to avoid possible legal consequences for the member of the BoD. Furthermore, Article 45 of the Money Launder - ing Act (Law No 4557/2018) is of importance. Under this article, the imposition of administra - tive fines and other administrative sanctions on legal persons can occur as a secondary effect of a criminal punishment for money laundering, if the money laundering or the predicate offence was committed for the benefit of the legal per - son. The same applies if the money laundering was only made possible due to a lack of or inad - equate supervision of the perpetrator on the part of the legal entity. Administrative sanctions can be very high (sanctions range from EUR50,000 to EUR10 million, with a temporary suspension of operations between one month and two years – possibly even permanent suspension of opera - tions). Article 45 (4) of the Money Laundering Act pro - vides, inter alia, that the cumulative or alternative
imposition of the above sanctions, as well as the corresponding sanction assessment, depends on the actions of the company after the unlawful act. This provision sufficiently demonstrates that potential internal company investigations with regard to violations of rules relevant under crimi - nal law can lead to a mitigation of the prescribed sanctions for the legal entity. Τhe same applies with regard to Article 134 of Law 5090/2024 con - cerning the liability of legal persons and enti - ties for bribery offences, according to which any internal investigation which contributed to the clarification of the breach shall be taken into account for the calculation of sanctions. In addition, Article 263A of the Greek Criminal Code provides for leniency measures for per - sons who contribute to the disclosure of acts of corruption, while, according to Article 396 (2A) of the Greek Criminal Code, the punishability of the acceptance and offer of an advantage in the private sector (Article 396 paragraphs 1 and 2) of the Greek Criminal Code) is expunged if the responsible person, of their own volition and before being examined in any way by the author - ities, reports their act to the judicial authorities by means of a written report. Ordering an inter - nal investigation and submitting a thorough final report to the competent judicial authorities can therefore have significant benefits for all parties involved. Finally, it should be noted that Law 4990/2022 incorporates into the Greek legal order European Directive 2019/1937 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2019 on the protection of persons who report violations of Union law. It follows on from Articles 9 and 10 of Law 4990/2022, which provides that companies with more than 50 employees must maintain an internal reporting channel, ensure the confiden - tiality of the report, and process its content in
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