The Greek government will be submitting a legislation to Parliament next week, aiming to recover funds deprived from the state through corruption or other criminal activities. According to the new legislation, those who return stolen funds will be spared prison time.
It is estimated that the measures proposed by the Greek Justice Minister Haralambos Athanasiou, will recover about 2.5 billion euros.
The legislation foresees that citizens charged with tax evasion, money laundering, submitting inaccurate sources of wealth declarations or fraud will be able to secure lenient treatment if they return the stolen money. If all the money is returned before the suspect faces a magistrate court, they will get a three-year sentence instead of a life term. If funds are returned before the case goes to trial, a life term sentence will be reduced to seven years, or 10 years if the money is returned by the time the case goes to appeal.
Other provisions in the legislation allow judicial authorities in Greece to seize and liquidate the properties of suspects charged with stealing money from the state.
Similar systems have already been put into effect in other European countries such as Germany, where out of 4.5 million cases where suspects could pay to be spared jail time, only 700,000 ended up going to trial.
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