A modern Greek classic: two civil servants are sentenced to jail for the intentional murder of a mayor but they still receive their salaries. Is it possible? Oh, yes, it is … in Greece where civil servants’ rights end after their death. And not even then. Then, their unmarried daughters or sons keep getting their pensions. In Greece of austerity and high unemployment. But that’s the private sector, not the public one.
WSJ: Years After Mayor’s Death, Killer Remains on Payroll
A local treasury employee in this mountain community shot the mayor with an Uzi submachine gun in late 2009, in the grisly conclusion to a suspected embezzlement scheme.
Nearly three years after he was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, Savvas Saltouridis remains on the municipal payroll.
European Pressphoto AgencySuspects Savvas Saltouridis (center) and Ioakeim Monos (second from left) are escorted by police officers following the shooting death of Pangaio Mayor Triantafyllos Koukoudis.
Co-worker Ioakeim Monos, sentenced to 16 years for complicity in the murder, also remains on the payroll. The two men, who are appealing their convictions, have been in prison for years.
On a December night in 2009, Mr. Saltouridis, the treasurer, and Mr. Monos, deputy treasurer, set out to lure Mayor Triantafyllos Koukoudis to a remote parking area off a coastal highway, according to the criminal-court decision.
The court convicted Mr. Saltouridis of intentional homicide “decided on and carried out in a calm mental state,” and Mr. Monos of direct complicity in intentional homicide.
Long before their trial, salary payments to Messrs. Saltouridis and Monos had been stopped by the acting mayor, Mr. Tsiakiris, when the two employees were jailed shortly after the shooting.
However, according to the law at the time, employees who couldn’t come to work because of incarceration were still entitled to half their pay. Sued for breach of duty, Mr. Tsiakiris said he had to resume salary payments of about €600 ($813) a month for each employee and make back payments
Full article in Wall Street Journal
