A 56-year-old man accused of acting as an intermediary in a network of straw men supplying an alleged €206 million tax fraud operation uncovered in Thessaloniki has been remanded in custody following his testimony before an investigating magistrate.

According to reports, the defendant, who is listed as working as a waiter, told the magistrate: “Through my profession, I learnt how to obtain business operating licences, so I started doing that alongside my regular job. That is how I came into contact with all these businesses, because I was very good at my work. You do not need tax or social security clearance certificates to obtain a licence, and I had no access to the companies’ financial records, so I did not know what was going on.”

According to the police case file submitted to prosecutors, the defendant allegedly directed an operation involving a pool of 29 straw men who appeared as directors or shareholders in 152 legal entities.

Specifically, through continuous, artificial and overlapping combinations involving only these 29 individuals, the organisation systematically established and amended the corporate structures of 152 companies.

The defendant is alleged to have caused losses of €19 million to the Greek state.

“This ratio, averaging eight fictitious companies per straw man, demonstrates that these individuals were used as disposable corporate fronts. The various combinations were not created for commercial purposes, but to establish a chaotic network of changes capable of concealing the real, de facto managers and preventing their immediate detection by the auditing authorities,” the case file states.

27-year-old woman released under restrictive conditions

A 27-year-old woman, who was the second defendant to appear before the investigating magistrate, was released under restrictive conditions. She had been arrested after being identified as a director of eight companies and a shareholder in another.

According to reports, the defendant claimed that she had signed authorisation documents believing she was going to be employed as a cleaner or waitress, occupations in which she had previously worked.

“They told me they were providing subsidies through OAED [the former Greek employment agency] and that they were going to hire me as a cleaner or waitress. I received money for a few months. When legal documents concerning the debts started arriving, I became alarmed. They told me, ‘Sign an authorisation and we will sort everything out for you,’” she told the investigating magistrate.

Four more defendants are expected to testify on Thursday, including an accountant and a lawyer alleged to have held leadership roles in the suspected fraud operation, as well as two other alleged straw men.

Speaking after the 27-year-old’s release, her lawyer, Anthoula Anasoglou, described the questioning as thorough and said her client had been misled.

“It was an investigation marked by depth, intensity, duration and, above all, empathy. When we have excellent investigating magistrates and prosecutors, they understand the different levels of involvement, the role of each individual and the substance of the case,” she said.

“To give you an idea, the indictment was extensive and extraordinarily broad, unnecessarily so, but we have now been left with two felony charges, which we hope will also be dropped as the proceedings continue. We explained everything, the case was put into its proper perspective and the questions were genuinely targeted.”

Anasoglou said the remaining charges concerned complicity in fraud and membership of a criminal organisation, rather than recruitment of straw men.

“We believe all these charges will eventually be dropped because they are offences requiring criminal intent, whereas in this case there was genuine deception. This young woman is not a perpetrator; she is a victim. In fact, today she received yet another court document relating to debts that unscrupulous individuals have accumulated in her name.”

She added that the defence team felt vindicated by the outcome, which would allow the young mother to return home to her child.