ND decries early release of disgraced energy exec under new criminal code
Disgraced energy executive Aristeidis Floros was granted conditional release from prison on Tuesday by an Athens court that is hearing his second appeal against a conviction for embezzlement and money laundering.
Floros was convicted in 2017 to 21 years in prison over the Energa energy scam, which involved cheating the state out of millions of euros in property taxes that had been withheld from consumers' power bills. He is also under investigation over medical documents he presented in order to secure a brief release last year and whose authenticity has been challenged, as well as for his alleged connection to a 2014 assassination attempt against lawyer Giorgos Antonopoulos.
Floros' release on 50,000 euros bail was dictated by the new penal code introduced by the previous leftist administration, which grants embezzlers more lenient treatment.
Newly elected New Democracy decried the decision, saying that the “first negative effects of the new criminal code passed unilaterally by SYRIZA are already becoming apparent.”
“ND has made a commitment to change all the problematic articles of the new criminal code immediately,” the center-right party added in its statement.
