EU travel rules thwart probe

A few days after a former Siemens Hellas official became the firm’s third executive to flee the country while under investigation in connection with a cash-for-contracts scandal, police sources told Kathimerini that travel bans that have been issued against suspects by judicial authorities are totally ineffective. Commenting on the departure to Munich earlier this week of Volker Jung, a former manager of the communications unit at Siemens in Germany and ex-head of the supervisory board at Siemens Hellas, a police source said that the travel ban imposed on the suspect was essentially meaningless because it is forbidden for European Union citizens traveling within the Schengen zone to be subject to inspections. As a result, although police are informed about the imposition of travel bans on suspects, they are unable to trace those violating the restrictions.