Supreme Court prosecutor seeks swift translation of charge sheet in Siemens trial

Supreme Court prosecutor Xeni Dimitriou on Tuesday asked the head of the Athens Court of First Instance, Isidoros Dogiakos, to immediately forward the charge sheet for the Siemens cash-for-contracts scandal to the Foreign Ministry for translation. Dimitriou asked for a deadline to be set for the translation of the charge sheet into French and German, which has been holding up the trial.

The trial of dozens of suspects in the Siemens scandal was indefinitely postponed on July 12 because the charge sheet, which runs to more than 4,500 pages, and important documents relating to the case had not been translated into German and French.

The case went to court in Athens some 10 years after judicial authorities launched an investigation into claims that the German electronic and engineering giant’s Greek branch bribed Greek politicians and public officials to secure state contracts.

However, the court upheld a complaint by the legal counsel of 13 German defendants and one French-Swiss national over the fact that the charge sheet had not been presented, as stipulated by international law, in the defendants’ native language.