Appeals court clears all defendants in Siemens bribery case

All 20 defendants were acquitted on Monday by the Five-Member Criminal Court of Appeal in Athens for the damage suffered by the Greek state during the signing of the contract with Siemens for the digitization of OTE in 1998.

The ruling overturned a lower court decision from 2019 which had handed multi-year jail sentences to all suspects.

On Monday, all of the defendants were found not guilty of money laundering, either by a majority or unanimous decision, and the majority of them had their prosecutions for activities committed before 2002 dropped due to the statute of limitations.

In his short reasoning, the president of the court stated that it was not proven that there was an illegal increase in the assets of the OTE executives.

With regard to Christos Karavelas, who has been sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and is still on the run to this day, his criminal treatment was not examined as no appeal was lodged.

Furthermore, no judgment was given for Dimitris Gyftopoulos either, as he is deceased.