Proton Bank

Deputy Parliament Speaker Tasia Christodoulopoulou (SYRIZA) has announced that she consents to summoning Anti-Money Laundering Authority Chief Anna Zairi and the head of the Authority's investigation of the DEPA-ELFE (Hellenic Fertilizers and Chemicals) affair, who resigned in the middle of the probe, to appear before the Parliamentary Committee on Transparency.

An Athens prosecutor on Friday ordered a preliminary investigation into reports that a close associate of a government minister had tried to intervene so that a company owned by disgraced businessman Lavrentis Lavrentiadis could get out of paying more than 120 million euros in debts to the Public Gas Corporation (DEPA).

A once-influential businessman who fell from grace after he was accused of embezzlement in the case of failed Proton Bank, Lavrentis Lavrentiadis faces fresh criminal charges after an Athens prosecutor accused him of committing fraud to the detriment of the state.

The Council of State, the country's highest administrative court, on Friday ordered Lavrentis Lavrentiadis, former chief of Proton Bank, and another four executives of the lender which went into liquidation in 2011 to pay a fine of 495,000 euros after deeming that they failed to take the required action to ward against money laundering and other financial crimes.

The trial of former Proton Bank Chairman Lavrentis Lavrentiadis and another 42 people ran into problems Friday as the lawyers of all 43 defendants resigned from the case over a legal technicality. This means the court will have to appoint new lawyers for the trial to continue.

A prosecutor in Athens on Friday filed felony charges against the former executives at the now defunct Proton Bank in connection with loans totaling 38 million euros.

The members of the committee responsible for approving loans are accused of breach of trust concerning credit extended to two businessmen who joined the panel from Omega Bank once it was absorbed by Proton.

Businessman Athinagoras Andreadakis, who was injured when a booby-trapped gift went off in his hands in June 2012, on Tuesday withdrew his allegations that another entrepreneur, Lavrentis Lavrentiadis, was responsible for the attack.

Andreadakis made the claim on the first day of the trial in which Lavrentiadis and six others are facing charges of plotting to kill the businessman.

A prosecutor in charge of investigating corruption claims in Thessaloniki, Argyris Dimopoulos, has ordered a preliminary probe a large loan issued by Proton Bank before the lender was split into parts and liquidated, the Athens-Macedonia News Agency reported on Tuesday.

Businessman Lavrentis Lavrentiadis, the former major stakeholder in Proton Bank, is facing new felony charges in a case involving the sale of Neochimiki, a chemicals distributor, in a deal valued at 700 million euros, it emerged Friday.

An Athens criminal court is expected to hear the case against businessman and former Proton Bank Chairman Lavrentis Lavrentiadis and another 42 defendants on March 23 next year.

The case centers on questionable loans amounting to some 700 million euros which were allegedly handed out by the defunct lender to Lavrentiadis’s group of companies.