After nearly six years of judicial investigations, postponements and a series of other delays in the criminal investigation of the high-profile Folli Follie case, the plea of the first and one of the main defendants of the high-profile financial scandal that exposed the country internationally began today at the Athens Court of Appeal for Criminal Matters.
This is the apology of the founder of the long-suffering company, Dimitris Koutsolioutsos, who even started his apology in court today, saying that all this time he had been waiting for this day “how and how”.
Among other things today Dimitris Koutsolioutsos apologizing for a number of felony charges, he told the court: “I have been waiting for this day for a long time.
All these years I have not spoken anywhere.
A part of the press is constantly attacking me and I am forced not to leave the house.
The presumption of my innocence has become shambles. I want you to know the reality and you will judge it afterwards.”
Referring to the founding of Folli Follie, Dimitris Koutsolioutsos spoke during today’s first part of his apology about a lifelong dream, which he said he managed to realize with hard work.
“We offered the Greek state 1.5 billion within a decade. I do not accept that there was nothing,” the defendant said, refuting the charges the justice system has levelled against him. “We entered the stock market with our sword,” he even said, and at another point in his plea he said: “We opened 65 stores in Greece and at the same time 10 stores in foreign capitals.
We made the company a colossus, the largest on the stock exchange and with significant prospects for the future. Today I feel the need to say an apology to the executives who sat here next to me and for 20 years helped to consolidate the company without having anything to do with all this.”
Continuing, the defendant referred to the expansion of his company in Hong Kong. “In 1998 he opened the first office in Hong Kong, which was the New York of Asia. We were selling Greece. All the campaigns were about Greece. In all the subways, airports there were Folli – Follie posters. It cost me a couple of billion all this. We became known worldwide,” he said.
However, today the apology of Dimitris Koutsolioutsos was not completed but is expected to continue in the next court hearing, which is set for March 27.
It will be recalled that the founder of Folli Follie Dimitris Koutsolioutsos, his wife Katie, their son Tzortzis and their co-defendants are being tried for the following felonies: criminal organisation, joint and aggravated forgery, joint and aggravated fraud, joint, professional and aggravated fraud, joint, professional and aggravated market manipulation and joint and aggravated money laundering.
In addition, Dimitris Koutsolioutsos will also be tried for the criminal offence of abuse of privileged information, both intentionally and on a professional basis.
According to the indictment, the criminal activity of the defendants starts at least from 2006 and is characterised by an “orgy” of forgery of bank documents, fictitious transactions and alleged subsidiaries of Folli – Follie in Asia, which in reality had no commercial activity.
In particular, as the audits found, Folli – Follie’s company in China had for several years been presenting fictitious bank balances in legitimate bank accounts, as well as fictitious bank balances in non-existent fictitious bank accounts, and fabricating bank statements to substantiate these balances.
Subsequently, Dimitris and George Koutsolioutsos, according to the case file, sent to Greece the falsified financial statements of their alleged companies in China, and requested that these be consolidated with the balance sheets of the companies of their other group, which was active in Greece, Europe and North America.
In this way, according to the case file, they were able to ‘draw up advantageous business deals and had easy access to borrowing through credit institutions, thereby knowingly transferring the risk (credit, investment, etc.) to third parties’.
According to the judgment, Folli Follie’s major financial fraud caused enormous losses which, although it cannot be precisely determined, are estimated at EUR 413 078 346.17.
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