May 2021

Prosecutor's Order on the Placement of Charges in the File for Ongoing Fraud and Infringement Offences under Law 4624/2019

The Athens District Attorney recently issued an order by which two crimes against our clients (which, due to their relevance, had been merged into a common criminal case) were put on file (dismissed). With these, the petitioners sought criminal prosecution for the felonies of a) repeated illegal interference with a personal data archiving system concerning criminal convictions with an intended pecuniary benefit of more than 120.000 € (alleged violation of Art. 3 and 4 of Law 4624/2019 in combination with Article 10 of the General Data Protection Regulation EU 679/2016 - GDPR) and b) attempted fraud in court with intended pecuniary benefit exceeding €120,000 (alleged violation of Article 386(1) of the Criminal Code). The prosecutor dismissed these charges as legally unfounded. As regards the issue of unlawful processing of personal data, it was held that (a) the file kept before a prosecution or judicial authority in general does not constitute a filing system within the meaning of the above law and regulation, and that (b) in any event, the obtaining of records from a relevant criminal file upon lawful request does not constitute unlawful interference with a filing system, even if they were used for a purpose other than that stated in the disputed request for their obtaining (which is of course not the case). As regards the charge of attempted fraud on the courts, it was held that this was also not legally established, as the claim of the alleged perpetrators before the civil courts was never examined in substance and, therefore, there was no de facto possibility of misleading judicial officials by the alleged misleading allegations.