Appeals court upholds sentence for ex-minister Papantoniou and wife
An appeals court in Athens Tuesday upheld the four-year jail sentence handed to former Finance Minister Yiannos Papantoniou and his wife Stavroula Kourakou at a previous trial after the judge ruled that the couple were involved in a “long and coordinated attempt” to hide from authorities the existence of 1.3 million euros in a bank account in Switzerland.
Papantoniou and his wife can pay off their sentences for 10 euros a day each, or 29,200 in total. They also have to pay a penalty of 10,000 euros.
The account was opened in 2000 at the Geneva branch of HSBC and was not discovered until Greece was given the so-called Lagarde list by French authorities in 2010.
The list, which was copied by a whistleblower, contained the names of more than 2,000 Greeks with deposits at the bank. Kourakou transferred the money back to Greece in 2010.
Papantoniou had claimed that he did not know about the account as it had been opened by Kourakou’s ex-husband but the judge did not accept this explanation.
