June 2021

Decision of the Athens Criminal Court of Appeal on the acquittal of the offence of non-payment of debts amounting to 5 million euros

A decision of the Athens Criminal Court of Appeal in favour of our client has been published. The latter overturned the original conviction of the Athens Trial Court, which imposed a five-year prison sentence (converted to a fine of 20€/day) for the allegedly committed offence of non-payment of debts to the State amounting to 5.000.000 euros (Article 25 of Law 1882/1990). In particular, the Court accepted that following the introduction of article 469 of the CC (effective from 1.7.2019), from the list of debts determining the debts of the offence of non-payment, the amounts derived from the offences of tax evasion, as standardised in article 66 of the Code of Fiscal Procedure (CCP), are deducted, without the amount of the amount allegedly owed (i.e., if it is more than 50. 000 in the case of Value Added Tax or over €100 000 in the case of Income Tax). The amounts to be deducted also include, according to the same judgment, any charges arising from tax evasion offences, such as, in particular, the administrative fines concerned. In the present case, following the deduction of the sums concerned, the act became unenforceable, since the alleged debts have now fallen below the criminal threshold of EUR 100 000 for the offence of non-payment. The Court of Appeal, in fact, did not take into account the method of calculation as reflected in a relevant document of the alleged debtor's tax office, which was sent by the latter to the relevant public prosecutor's office, following an obligation to do so. In the said document, the Tax Office did not deduct from the list of debts any amounts of charges (such as fines), nor did it deduct amounts where the main tax did not exceed the thresholds of €50,000 and €100,000 for VAT and income respectively, thus insisting on the conviction of the debtor. Importantly, even the additional tax of the previous article 1 of Law no. 2523/1997 was considered as a tax falling under the offences of tax evasion and therefore not counted for the offence of Law 2523/1997. 1882/1990.