Court finds 13 guilty in share scam
The three-month trial of 17 people charged with tricking stock market investors and falsely driving up share prices in 1999 ended yesterday with 13 of them being given between three- and five-year jail sentences and having to pay a total of more than 550,000 euros in fines. The stiffest penalty was handed down to Panayiotis Kondalexis, owner of a stock brokerage firm and former president of the stockbrokers’ union. He was given a five-year jail sentence and a 250,000-euro fine. Several other high-profile businessmen, including Giorgos Batatoudis, the former chairman of PAOK soccer club, and three members of the Stegos family, which owns the Olympic Technodomiki construction company, were given three-year jail terms and 140-euro fines. The guilty parties were found to have cooperated between March and September 1999 to force rises in the share prices of their firms by issuing false announcements about their companies’ performance and prospects in a bid to attract investors. All 13 were freed pending their appeal.
