Justice Minister Athanasiou accused of false financial declarations

Editor’s note: this story was initially published in Greek in the July 3rd, 2014 print edition of HOT DOC. It is republished here with permission. Translation by TPPI.

By Kostas Vaxevanis

Calling the Prosecutor for the Minister of Justice
 
Time may be the judge of judges, as the Serbian writer Milovan Vitezovic wrote, but the Minister of Justice and former judge Charalambos Athanasiou as a political figure has opted to be judged much sooner. The former Supreme Court justice who is from a relatively poor family from Lesbos, is already being judged for his year-long legislative record which has caused great consternation among the ranks of his former colleagues.
 
Amendments which do not serve a legal need, bills which absolve entire categories of people who are suspect in the eyes of the public, but which apply only for a few days before being rescinded – having nevertheless served their legal purpose for those who take advantage of them – are just a few the criticisms which are being levelled – loudly and insistently – by politicians, justices and prosecutors at Mr Athanasiou’s ministerial record.
 
‘Why,’ they ask, ‘is a man who once served in the courts, passing laws which protect those against whom we have built cases following years of investigations?’ The most recent example is the law which prohibits prosecutors from monitoring the phone lines of those accused in cases of money laundering. White collar crime, the type of crime in which politicians are implicated, will not be the subject of surveillance by order of Athanasiou. Athanasiou was the minister who did not pass on to parliament the casefile which described the apparent bribery of former minister Yiannis Michelakis. He held it for months in his drawer and returned it to the Supreme Court supposedly for legal audit when the case was revealed by HOT DOC.
 
But the criticism of the Justice Minister goes beyond his legislative activities. Former colleagues have levelled charges against him, describing Athanasiou as a judge who has at his disposal extensive real estate assets, the purchases of which were never examined even though the documented evidence raises serious questions. One charge regarding the ‘pothen esches’ declaration (the mandatory disclosure of his personal wealth) of the former Supreme Court justice was ‘frozen’ by the Justice Ministry and the file was closed without an investigation.
 
The same charges were sent to HOT DOC. Even though it is impossible to verify the evidence included in the allegation given that doing so would require bank account details and stock exchange codes, the journalistic investigation as it proceeded revealed that the minister appears to have made a false declaration regarding a property that he owns and which he declared as being 282 square meters smaller than it actually is. For all the time that he was a judge and convicting people of building code violations, he had an unlicensed construction on the ground floor of his building. His children appear to have been property owners at a time that they were students with no incomes. Unfortunately the minister, despite our official requests for answers regarding the apparently damning evidence, has refused to respond. This inspite of the fact that he is duty-bound to, both as a former justice and politician who must submit a ‘pothen esches’ personal wealth declaration which is a matter of public record.
 
Mr Athanasiou made a personal phone call requesting to offer ‘friendly’ and unofficial refutations, without evidence. As a journalist I must admit that with Charalambos Athanasiou I have a connection that goes back many years as we have roots in same village. But with the truth my connection is greater.

A false declaration of personal wealth, luxury properties and the ‘buried’ allegations
 
In the summer of 2008, a two page anonymous letter was found by the Vice President of the Supreme Court and President of the Investigating Committee for Justices, Ioannis Papanikolaou in the post office box of the Supreme Court. The letter was typewritten and its content concerned the then Supreme Court Justice Charalambos Athanasiou. The anonymous whistleblower justified his anonymity by citing the power that Athanasiou had due to his position and connections.
 
The allegations were significant. They described the Supreme Court Justice Charalambos Athanasiou as a relatively poor judge from Lesbos married to a woman who was not employed, yet the couple managed to acquire extensive real estate assets with only one salary. The charges portray Charalambos Athanasiou as having made the  property purchases in the 1980s on his native island and which he portrayed as being of low value. Subsequently, according to the letter, “with a 1985 contract by the notary Athina Michou, he purchased an expensive corner plot in Melissia in Attica, on the corner of Kolokotroni and 3rd of September. Immediately afterwards he built a two-floor home in which he lives worth about a million euros.”
 
The anonymous writer also charged that Athanasiou concealed wealth by purchasing properties under the names of his children who did not have any sources of income. Specifically the letter writes, “he purchased a plot of about one stremma in Ano Melissia under the names of his daughter and son Eleni and Christofa, at a time when both were students and did not have ANY source of income. Providing direct ownership to his children, the students, he immediately built at his own expense… luxury maisonettes and purchased in his own name a 4 liter Jeep Grand Cherokee worth 80,000 euros. In order to justify the purchases to his fellow townsmen who had been gossiping about him for a while, he stated that he sold all of his wife’s farmland. Yet everybody knows that the two continue to own their fields. Everybody knows that they are of low value… and would not suffice for 1/1000th of all of these purchases. As for the Jeep Grand Cherokee worth 80,000 euros he justifies it by claiming that he supposedly bought it for 30,000. How? People from his village know that it was a gift from a well-known businessman because [Athanasiou] had taken on the task of ‘cleaning up’ his cases against his wife, Milena Apostolaki which were still pending in the courts.”
 
The letter continues in the same accusatory tone and with similarly serious charges, accusing Justice Athanasiou of acquiring thousands of shares and implying that he played with stock market bubbles with inside information from the owner of the company ‘Delta’. After the paralegal was exposed, according to the charges, Athanasiou “liquidated ALL of the shares, depositing thousands of euros in banks and subsequently transferring the money to a company in Cyprus.”
 

The lost charges and… honour
 
The letter to the Supreme Court was not accompanied by any evidence proving what it maintained, aside from two photographs which depicted the residential complex described as a property of the Supreme Court justice. The President of the Investigating Committee for Justices and Vice President of the Supreme Court Ioannis Papanikolaou, who was the recipient of the letter on the 7th of August 2008, forwarded all of the evidence to the the Justice Minister Sotiris Hatzigakis who was, according to the law, the competent authority to issue an order to investigate a Supreme Court Justice. Several justices recall how, at that time, the charges had caused a stir in the top court of the country and it was commonly held that the case needed to be investigated in order for there to be no shadow cast not only on Charalambos Athanasiou himself but over the court itself.
 
The document which was sent to the Justice Ministry was given the protocol number 595. We looked in to what became of the file and the investigation, sending an official request to the Justice Ministry which happens to be under the control of the then under-investigation justice. The ministry did not respond. Attempting to find out what had happened, we spoke to the then minister Sotiris Hatzigakis who stated that ‘usually with charges like these, in particular when they are made anonymously, they are forwarded by the Justice Minister to the Supreme Court Prosecutors for further action. They examine the substance of the charges and either move forward or not. The minister is an intermediary. The minister cannot pass judgment about the actions of any citizen. If, therefore, the Auditing Council had passed [the allegations] on to the Justice Minister, he would have had the obligation to pass it on to the Supreme Court for its bodies to examine and determine whether it is true or not. I cannot remember the case which you are talking about, but that is the standard procedure.”
 
We approached Mr Hatzigakis’s successor, Haris Kastanidis and asked him if during his tenure the ministry had dealt with the allegations relating to Charalambos Athanasiou. Mr Kastanidis responded that, “When I was minister there was an allegation which referred to the previous allegation regarding Athanasiou. That is a letter which said ‘what happened Mr minister with the charges regarding Athanasiou in 2008?’ Something like that. I asked the ministry, its agencies to inform me about the particular file. I remember clearly that they told me that there was no such file.”
 
The allegations against Charalambos Athanasiou were not investigated. According to sources, on the 19th of December 2008, the head of the Justice Administration General Directorate, Maria Kontopoulou, without having the legal authority to do so, sent a letter to the Supreme Court with which the case was shelved.
 
The false ‘Pothen Esches’ personal wealth declaration for the 632 sq meter house
 
Eight years after the allegations were made to the Supreme Court, the anonymous letter was sent to HOT DOC. We decided that we needed to investigate the possibility that all that was alleged regarding the former Supreme Court judge and current Justice Minister may have a degree of truth. From the ‘pothen esches’ personal wealth declaration which Charalambos Athanasiou submitted in 2012 it appears that he (together with his wife) owns 18 properties. Six of those, mainly agricultural land, belong to his wife and constitute her family’s holdings on Lesbos. In 1983, Athanasiou acquired an 11 stremma coastal plot in the area of Kalloni on Lesbos which he declares in his ‘pothen esches’. The letter to the Supreme Court described a 15 stremma plot in the same area. In 1985, Charalambos Athanasiou and his wife acquired a two-floor apartment building on the street 3rd of September in Melissia, something that is also listed in the letter. According to the ‘pothen esches’ statement which he submitted to parliament, the property is 350 square meters and 50% belongs to Mr Athanasiou and 50% to his wife, Marianthi. But according to the contracts which have been submitted to the Marousi registry, the property owned by the Athanasiou family is not 350 square meters as declared but 631.52. That is, the minister has not declared 281.52 meters.
 
The property, according to the Marousi registry has: One 112.20 square meter apartment, a second apartment that is 85.90 sq. meters and a third 192.90 sq. meter apartment. Two storage areas 149.20 and 27.50 sq meters respectively and another ground floor flat that is 63.82 square meters. In total 631.52 square meters. One of the storage areas is rented by the municipality where one of the councillors is Nikos Ligas, a co-owner of another property owned by the Athanasiou family.

The 630 square meter Athanasiou family home. Photo: HOT DOC

 
He tried others after having violated the building code himself
 
It is interesting that the ground floor apartments that is 63.82 square meters was created after the parking area under the apartment building was illegally blocked off (and subsequently legalised). This means that Charalambos Athanasiou as a judge who obviously tried cases of building code violations, had himself an unlicensed construction in the area where the law demands there be an open space. And that despite having a 600 square meter area for a family of four.
 
We avoided valuing the 632 square meter property and estimations as to whether that can be justified by the couple’s income, believing that that is a job for the Prosecutor and the Greek parliament regarding his ‘pothen esches’ declarations. It is however interesting that a recent bill submitted by Athanasiou to reform the law governing the ‘pothen esches’ of political figures removed a provision concerning the punishment for all those who had made false ‘pothen esches’ declarations for themselves and their underage children. The law provided for personal asset seizures, fines and strict punishments which have been eliminated from the new Athanasiou law.
 

Student property owners
 
We attempted to establish whether there was any truth to the allegation that the minister had ‘passed on’ personal assets to his children in an attempt for those not to appear on his ‘pothen esches’ declaration. According to the descriptions in the letter regarding luxury maisonettes in the names of the children of the minister, Christofa and Eleni Athanasiou in Melissia, we managed to find that indeed on the plot in question there is a 730 square meter building 50% of which belongs to the Athanasiou children (36% to the daughter and 14% to the son). Co-owners of the remaining 50% of the property were the brothers Nikos and Evangelos Ligas. The plot was bought in 2003 when Eleni and Christofas were students and had no income. The Liga family was in the construction business but the building was not constructed through the system of ‘antiparochi’ [the system in Greece where by a civil engineer or architect would build a building with apartment space in the construction provided as payment] but at the personal expense of the Athanasiou family.

The 730 square meter property which the Athanasiou children (now adults) have joint ownership of. Photo: HOT DOC 

We communicated with the Ligas brothers and asked about the manner in which the building was constructed. Evangelos Ligas told us, “that plot was at the time outside of city plans and belonged to a friendly family who left in the early part of the previous decade for Canada. It was purchased undivided by two families that have a friendly relationship, while the Athanasiou siblings, who were students, according to Vangelis Ligas, bought half of the plot with money given to them by their grandfather.” Nikos Ligas recalled how the value of the land then was 20 million drachmas (roughly 60,000 euros). Of the 3 maisonettes which were built, one was owned by Nikolas Ligas, the second by Christofas Athanasiou and Evangelos Ligas and the third by Eleni Ligas. The second was sold in 2011 for 250,000 euros.
 
Charalambos Athanasiou still has properties, according to his ‘pothen esches’ in Zografou, Evia and Argolida which are, however, not described in his declaration in accordance with the law. Specific addresses are not given, while the statement appears to have been hurriedly written with indiscernible details. As an accountant characteristically told HOT DOC, “for any citizen a declaration like that would lead to fines and problems with the revenue service.”
 
As HOT DOC has noted a number of times, the ‘pothen esches’ which is submitted to the Greek parliament is effectively a list of personal assets which nobody knows the accuracy of because they are never checked. The statement also does not actually cover the ‘pothen’ – that is how the assets have been acquired. It amounts to a hypocritical functioning of the political system which purports to operate with transparency while effectively concealing data. As far as Athanasiou is concerned it is also interesting how the minister attempted – unsuccessfully – to pass a measure in parliament which stated that all who are required to submit a ‘pothen esches’ declaration are not required to declare income from shipping companies. Meaning that if a judge, politician or journalist with illegal income were to create an offshore shipping company they would not be required to declare it in the ‘pothen esches’. The amendment fortunately did not pass but it remains a question as to why a minister in a time of financial crisis and increasing poverty attempted to create a way for illegal income to be concealed.
 
It is now a question for the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court and the Pothen Esches Audit Committee of parliament to investigate the case and the evidence. The magazine has at its disposal the stock exchange codes and account numbers through which, according to allegations, amounts were transferred regarding investments in stocks. They are not necessarily illegal transactions but they must be investigated, particularly as they pertain to someone who has served the Justice Ministry both as a judge and a minister, an is as such ‘on trial’ due to the necessity of transparency.