Christos Orfanidis, owner of the well-known supermarkets, will serve a total sentence of six years for the role he played in issuing unsecured checks of the company "Orphanides Public Company Ltd".
In a recent decision, the three-member Court of Appeal rejected more than 110 appeals filed by Christos Orphanides, arguing that the sentences imposed on him were clearly excessive.
As noted in the decision of the Court of Appeals, these criminal cases concerned "dozens of cases of unsecured checks which according to the defense of the appellant (s.s. of Chr. Orfanidis) were of the order of € 30.000.000, having left a gap until today € 20.000.000 ». Under these circumstances, the Court of Appeal pointed out, "the blow to transactions was severe."
In these cases, which were brought before two judges, prison sentences of 28 and 30 months were imposed. These sentences were consecutive and further, consecutive of the first prison sentence imposed on Christos Orfanidis, in September 2017 and was 14 months long.
The first ground of appeal concerned the amount of the fines.
Rejecting the position that the penalties were particularly severe, the Court of Appeal noted that "the extent of the appellant's criminal action and the damage caused to the transactions was so severe that there is no room for the Court of Appeal to intervene today, either in the 28-month sentence or in the sentence of 30 months, an intervention that would only fit if the sentences were judged objectively, obviously excessive ".
The second ground of appeal concerned the allegation that the sequence of the sentences violated the principle of the totality of the sentence.
In this case, the Court of Appeals referred to the basic principle according to which "the focus of the principle of proportionality is the avoidance of excessive or disproportionate punishment in terms of the total criminal responsibility of the accused".
Dismissing all the appeals filed by the 67-year-old former businessman, the Court of Appeal stressed "the serious overall criminal action of the appellant and its serious consequences to the numerous counterparties of his company, in transactions and the market". He concluded that "under the particularly serious circumstances of the case, we believe that the reversal of the sequence of sentences would neutralize the required deterrence, giving the opposite message, that is, that illegality pays off."
Source: Philenews