November 2021

Decision of the Athens Single Municipal Court of Athens on Discharge for the Offence of Non-Payment of Debts amounting to approximately 400.000 euros

A recent acquittal decision in favour of our client was published by the Athens Single Judge's Court which acquitted the alleged debtor for the offence of non-payment of debts to the State (article 25 of Law 1882/1990) amounting to approximately 400.000 €, which was allegedly created by the latter in his capacity as a manager of a Private Equity Company. In particular, the Court accepted that, following the introduction of article 469 of the Civil Code (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, and in fact, these offences also include the non-payment of VAT (article 66(1)(b) CCP), regardless of the amount. This was a debt which was shown in the relevant table under the heading 'VAT debt declarations via the Internet'. Indeed, the particularly interesting point is that amounts which, although not paid, were correctly declared in the periodic VAT returns were also considered to be deductible from the debtors' table. In the present case, after the amounts concerned had been deducted, the act became unenforceable, as the alleged debts now fell below the criminal threshold of €100 000 for the offence of non-payment. The Court, in fact, did not take into account a relevant document of the alleged debtor's tax office, which was sent by the latter to the relevant public prosecutor's office and incorrectly determined that none of the amounts mentioned in the list of debts originated from a tax evasion offence (for more on this offence and this allegation see here).