Aspis chief to be tried for fraud
The Supreme Court has committed a top financial executive and two employees to trial on criminal charges for defrauding investors, the Athens News Agency reported on Saturday. Panagiotis Psomiadis, the chief executive officer of Aspis Pronoia insurance company and vice president of Aspis Mortgage Bank, is accused of instigating a fraudulent scheme against bank clients who were persuaded to deposit sums against shares they were assured to receive after the bank’s listing on the Athens Stock Exchange late in 1995. Two senior executives of the bank’s Thessaloniki branch, Nikolaos Kabouris and Christina Valerianou, are accused of deceiving two investors into depositing 22.5 million drachmas (660,000 euros) against shares at the price of 4,000 drachmas each, promising 18 percent interest if the shares were not delivered by the end of the year. The promises were broken, while seven other investors also deposited a total of 32.6 million drachmas (957,000 euros) on the same premise. Psomiadis later returned some of the money in out-of-court settlements. De Palacio added that there was nothing so far to confirm that Olympic or its subsidiaries had improperly benefited from state aid. Olympic was granted a 19.5-million-euro loan in January by state-controlled Commercial Bank.
