The Council of State, Greece’s highest administrative court, has deemed unconstitutional a law allowing the Financial Crimes Squad, known as SDOE, to freeze bank accounts, shares and properties of suspects linked to cases of large-scale tax evasion, smuggling and other financial crimes.
The court further ruled that the law was against the principles of the European Convention of Human Rights, as it would not allow the owner of these ‘frozen’ assets even to pay outstanding debts. Further, it would not be clear for how long the assets would be frozen.
A final decision, however, was expected to be reached at a Council of State’s plenary session.
The plans of Greek Finance Ministry that SDOE will have online access to bank accounts will come infor effect next June. It was originally planned to come into effect middle of March 2013 but it has been postponed due to personnel shortage.
Huh? Freezing assets that might be gathered illegally “is against the principles of the European Convention of Human Rights”?! Since when???
And why does it not surprise me that this online access to bank accounts is postponed?
Every single measure that threatened to be effective against corruption and graft that has been introduced since 2010 is either not implemented or sidelined… *sigh*
you misunderstood this (or I didn’t formulated correctly): the law was formulated so that it violate…
I noted 1-2 things in the post but no time for more these days.
Ah, that explains it better. Thank you.
So, 300 MPs together with all their staff (family and friends) were not able, again, to draft a law that did NOT violate the constitution. That’s also a nice way to never get any real effective action on corruption and draft…