Angelos Filippidis arrested in Turkey

Angelos Filippidis escaped arrest this week, since he was abroad. His warrant was transformed immediately into an international warrant. Although he claimed to be to be in the United States on a business trip, police were able to track his exact position through his cellphone. He was arrested in a hotel in Constantinople, Turkey.

He is expected in Athens as soon as Greek justice sends out the relevant documents to Turkish judicial authorities, so he may face charges of money laundering and fraud against the State.  This procedure may last some days. In the meantime he will be held at the Malpepe prison, where all foreigners are held until deportation.

This week, warrants for 7 Hellenic Postbank executives were issued, on charges of money laundering and fraud against the state. Greek prosecutors are looking into a series of loans which the state bank issued from 2007-2012 and which resulted into 500 million euros of losses for the bank.

The prosecutors investigating Hellenic Postbank have detected many cases of over-financing of companies and businessmen who obviously had not met the requirements for obtaining a loan. The management and staff of Postbank in turn had broken the law to the detriment of the assets of the bank and the state, which have not yet been restore. Prosecutor Popi Papandreou has detected cases of legalisation of revenue obtained through the specific illegal loans, the amounts of which had been hidden in offshore companies or used to purchase property abroad. The total losses for the bank in this case amount to 400-500 million euros.