June 2024

Decision of the Misdemeanor Court of Athens regarding the Termination of Criminal Prosecution for Acceptance of False/Fictitious Invoices

A recent decision by the Athens Misdemeanor Court acquitted our client of the offense of accepting fictitious tax documents within the 2014 fiscal year from the anonymous company he represented (according to articles 66 paragraph 5a and 67 of the previous Tax Procedure Code). Specifically, the Court accepted the defendant's claim regarding the administrative settlement of the dispute and, as a result, the elimination of the criminality of the wrongful act due to the full payment of administrative fines and taxes (income and VAT) that were definitively confirmed. Indeed, the provision of article 24 paragraph 2 of Law 2523/1997 ("In cases of total administrative or judicial settlement for each tax or other total administrative settlement of the dispute, the criminal provisions of this law do not apply") was never explicitly repealed with the introduction of the Tax Procedure Code (from 1.1.2014). Moreover, the abolition of the possibility of administrative resolution that was provided before its introduction did not deactivate the general provision regarding the "other way of completing the administrative dispute" (see also Supreme Court decision 743/2020). This position is further reinforced by the fact that with the new Tax Procedure Code (Law 5104/2024), the possibility of accepting the administrative debt and thus resolving the dispute was reinstated, to strengthen the tax compliance of the obligors. Furthermore, if the Court had not accepted the relevant claim, which leads to the substantial acquittal of the defendant, it could have temporarily ceased the criminal prosecution, due to the restoration of the Public's damage, imposing the fulfillment of related conditions according to the provisions of articles 48 paragraph 2 and 7 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.