April 2025

Public Prosecutor’s Order for the Destruction of Criminal Record

The No. 19/2025 Order of the Public Prosecutor of the Court of Misdemeanours of Chania was recently issued, by virtue of which, following a request we submitted, the destruction of the Criminal Record (for general and judicial use) of our client, kept at the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Court of First Instance of Chania, was ordered.

Specifically, the Criminal Record contained a final sentence of imprisonment, with the first-instance conviction issued in the year 2015, and a suspension of execution granted by the first-instance court.

According to Article 573 paragraph 1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (point (c)), criminal records cease to be valid and may not be used if, for the conviction in respect of which the criminal record was issued, a suspension of execution was granted under Article 99 of the Penal Code, after the lapse of five years from the expiration of the suspension period, provided that the suspension has not been lifted or revoked.

The critical point in this particular case is: what should be considered the starting point of the suspension period?

In the aforementioned Order of the competent Public Prosecutor, the argument we submitted was accepted, namely the application of the more lenient provision of Article 99 of the Penal Code, as it was in force from 1 July 2019 to 17 November 2019, according to which:

"The period of suspension may not be shorter than the duration of the sentence and begins from the publication of the decision granting the suspension."

According to this, as long as the first-instance court grants a suspension of execution, the period of probation for the suspension begins from the publication of the first-instance decision.

In contrast, Law No. 4855/2021 amended the starting point of the probation period and Article 99 of the Penal Code now provides that the suspension period begins from the time the decision granting the suspension becomes enforceable.

This means that the probation period starts from the publication of the decision of the appellate court, since only then does the conviction become enforceable, except for non-appealable sentences. The shifting of the starting point of the suspension to the moment after the issuance of the appellate decision results in the conditions of Article 573 of the Code of Criminal Procedure for deletion of the sentence being fulfilled at a much later point in time.

In conclusion:

By adopting the application of the previously applicable provision of Article 99 of the Penal Code as the more favorable one, it was held in the present case that the probation period of the suspension began from the publication of the first-instance conviction, resulting in the required time conditions for the destruction of the criminal record in question (a total of 8 years from the beginning of the suspension in 2015) already having been fulfilled.