Justice minister requests Siemens trial to speed up
Greece’s Justice Minister Nikos Paraskevopoulos on Thursday met with Supreme Court prosecutor Xeni Dimitriou and requested that an exception be made in a Siemens cash-for-contracts case, in order for the trial to speed up after it was indefinitely postponed on a technicality.
On Tuesday, a court ruled that the case could not proceed given that the indictment ruling had not been translated into French and German for the one French-Swiss and 13 German defendants.
On Wednesday, following a meeting with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Dimitriou asked deputy prosecutor Anna Zairi to launch a probe into the reasons behind the delay.
On Thursday, chief Athens prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos in a statement reiterated his position that the prosecutor in charge had repeatedly asked the translation department of the Foreign Affairs Ministry to speed up the translation process in view of the trial.
Dogiakos also presented documents demonstrating that both the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Justice had been informed and asked to assist with the translation efforts.
