Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

By its decision no. 1470/2009, the Supreme Court held, despite the contrary proposal of the Prosecutor of the Supreme Court, that embezzlement is possible even of registered shares, the right over which cannot be lost by their beneficiary if the certificates are lost (that is, the physical instruments of the registered shares).

Specifically, the above Supreme Court decision accepted that the accused mandatary, as a lawyer, under the written authorization dated 17.11.1999, received from the complainant bank employee, who represented the complainant company, the specific registered shares of the Bank of Greece and of the National Bank of Greece noted in that authorization, for liquidation, and expressly undertook the obligation to return them if he did not liquidate them by 15.04.2000.

The accused did not liquidate the shares in question and did not appropriate their price, but had the purpose of appropriation and appropriated their physical certificates, so that the crime of embezzlement, for which he was convicted, is established, and not the removal of documents under Article 222 of the Penal Code, irrespective of the fact that they were registered and not bearer shares and that, for the formal completion of their transfer, in addition to the agreement and delivery of the certificates, registration in the special book of the above banking companies is required under Article 8b of Law 2190/1920; and there was no need for the court to investigate and specify by what lawful manner those registered shares were incorporated into the assets of the accused, since the accused "could incorporate those shares into his assets, because he held in his hands the relevant authorization of the complainant for liquidation and presents the incorporation clearly as a fact and not as a mere possibility" [pages 7-8 of the decision].

The finding of this decision causes surprise, according to which the phrase "he could incorporate those shares into his assets, since he held in his hands the relevant authorization" does not mean possibility, but means (and indeed clearly) fact.

Also particularly surprising is the assessment that the amount of 4,095,000 drachmas was an amount of particularly great value for the year 2000 and the economic data of that year, so that the embezzlements committed then and up to today of tens or even hundreds of millions of euros against the Greek State should escape every evaluative gradation (as they in fact do escape, through the establishment, by the well-known laws, of practical immunity from prosecution, because of short limitation periods, for embezzlements, frauds, thefts and other felonies committed by specific persons belonging to specific classes of the politically, family, socially and economically privileged) [page 5 of the decision].

In other words, by the decision under comment, the defense argument of the accused was held unfounded, although it had been accepted through the prosecutorial proposal, namely that the specific shares were registered and not bearer shares and, therefore, the right arising from the lawful possession of their certificate could not, legally and factually, be incorporated into the assets of the accused [page 6 of the decision]. That is, the accused who was convicted, even if he had wanted to, could not embezzle the registered shares, precisely because they were registered and not bearer shares.