(Reuters) -
A former bank chief was sentenced to eight years jail on Monday for fraud and
forgery, court officials said, the first major conviction resulting from an
anti-corruption drive ahead of a parliamentary election on Sunday.
Pavlos
Psomiadis, former President &
CEO of the Aspis Group of Companies
(Photo: May 20, 2001)
|
An Athens
court convicted Pavlos Psomiadis, former chief of small banking and insurance
group Aspis, on charges of forging documents to keep his business afloat.
Corruption
and cronyism are endemic in Greece. But no politician or senior businessman had
been convicted in recent years, fuelling popular frustration with mainstream
parties that pledge to uphold the debt-laden country's international bailout
and remain in the euro zone.
"He
was found guilty of fraud and forgery," a court official said. The
conviction stemmed from a forged letter of credit for over 550 million euros
($729 million) that Psomiadis submitted to regulators in 2009.
Aspis was
one of the first business groups to fall prey to the country's economic crisis.
T-bank (AMBr.AT), a small lender that emerged from the wreckage of the group,
was nationalized late last year under the terms of the country's EU/IMF
bailout.
Monday's
decision was the latest in a string of judicial moves as angry voters turn to
smaller parties to punish the main conservatives and socialists whom they blame
for the economic crisis and chronic corruption.
Earlier in
April, a former defense minister was jailed pending trial on money laundering
and bribery charges.
Last month,
a Greek prosecutor filed felony charges against a prominent banker over a
financial scandal that led to the EU/IMF-funded nationalization of small lender
Proton Bank (PRBr.AT).
(Reporting
by Harry Papachristou; editing by Stephen Nisbet)
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