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A man, aged 35, had been arrested and brought before a prosecutor on Tuesday for unlawful possession of personal data of nine million people, local authorities reported on Tuesday. The charges are for breaking the law on personal data protection. The inquest was held after a signal. The information obtained illegally was extracted from the database of the Ministry of Finance. It contains the names of individuals as well as their tax number, personal address and number plate of their car, if they have one.

The information in Greek media about the occupation of the detainee is chaotic. According to zougla.gr, he worked in a company for maintenance of computer systems and telecommunications, which had collaborated with the Ministry of Finance. He was a long-time employee of a foreign company, which has an office in the country and operates in the field of information technology. To Vima newspaper reported, that he worked for a marketing company. The police have announced that he is not married and is a resident of the region of Attica.

"The investigation of the case began yesterday (Monday, 19 November) following a complaint of an employee of the Data Protection Agency that an unknown person had illegally obtained a large archive of personal data of citizens in a digital format," said Dimitris Georgadzis who is the head of the police service combating cybercrime. In the course of the investigation, the special police officers found an external memory of 320 GB and three hard drives containing the citizens' personal data.

According to the Greek police spokesman, Christos Manouras, the data were downloaded in order to be sold later on the black market. One of the options is for them to be used by companies who want to expand their customer lists for promotional purposes and the other is for them to be used in illegal transactions with false identity. The prisoner refused to testify to the police and said that he would only speak to judicial authorities.