July 2021

Decision of the Athens Trial Court of Appeal on the declaration of inadmissible criminal prosecution

The decision of the Athens Trial Court of Appeal for Petty Crimes, No. 1992/2021, was recently issued in favour of our client. The latter overturned the original conviction of the Athens Trial Court for the alleged offences of slander and false reporting to the authorities. It is briefly noted that the legal dispute was initiated following the filing of an anonymous complaint of tax evasion against the defendant in support of the accusation. The Court found the defendant not guilty of making a false report to the authorities as the act has now become uncontested, and declared the prosecution for the offence of defamation inadmissible in the absence of a timely filing of a complaint. In particular, it was held that the alleged victim of the offence of defamation had already been aware of both the alleged offence and the alleged perpetrator at the time of receiving a copy of the complaint from the tax authority for the purpose of exercising the right to a prior hearing. Therefore, the three-month time limit for filing the complaint started from the above-mentioned actual knowledge and not from the notification of the partial on-site inspection report of the Investigation and Revenue Assurance Agency (as claimed by the accused), a notification which took place almost six months later.