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Anastasia Balezdrova

After years of uncertainty whether they will be able to save their investments after the failure of the insurance company Aspis, the people insured at it announced that they will file lawsuits against the state for criminal negligence.

GRReporter consulted the President of the association of the affected by the failure of the company Teoharis Petridis. He himself is an insurer and says "We believed for years that we were working with the second most significant insurance company. We have not thought how corrupt the things inside were." He explained that if the issue is not resolved at the political level by the end of the year, the people will start to file claims in a mass. This means that in case of a positive outcome for them the state will have to pay their amounts including the interest.

How did you come to the decision to start a lawsuit against the state?

There were two trends in our company and in general from the outset. The first way was to work towards a political settlement. The supporters of the other trend did say there is no chance the things to develop in this way and that the only solution is to start a lawsuit.

Ultimately, we decided to act in both ways. I also think that the political settlement will have immediate results, while judicial development will be slower. But, on the other hand, we would like to bring the case to court to force the government to find a political solution.

How many claims are expected to be filed?

The claims by members of the company will be over five thousand. Another 4-5 thousand will be filed from another office and the same number of claims will be filed from all over Greece. But let us assume that the claims will be about ten thousand. The claims of the affected vary between ten to one hundred thousands; there are also examples of millions. We are talking about a cost of over 500 million. All of these obligations will not be paid by Pavlos Psomiadis but by the state in the future. Someone will have to pay these amounts even if the final court order comes after ten years. And this is the Greek state.

By this I mean that we will file claims and for the core of the things, i.e. not to lose our rights, but also to force a political solution. Because the truth is that we would like a political solution to be found for our clients and policyholders and then as quickly as possible.

When would you start with the filing of claims?

We will collect the claims until August. If there is no change by then we will file them. We are also waiting a law of the Ministry of Justice to be passed, which will introduce faster proceedings.
 
I think the law is to sentence the political parties that were involved in political scandals as quickly as possible. These are not only specific persons for whom there have been revelations recently. There are many others associated with them. This is true in the case of Aspis too. It is not possible for one person, Pavlos Psomiadis, as smart as he may be to make all this scandal alone. Officials and executives from the Ministry of Development signed the certificates of solvency by 2006. Some ministers attended lunches and dinners with this person at that time. That means that dozens of members of the political and economic life have been involved in this story somehow.
 
Does this mean that you would insist an investigation of all this to be carried out?

I think the court will carry out this investigation anyway, when dealing with the case. I do not believe anyone could have though that such a big scandal could be caused by several people. It surely involves lawyers, civil servants, political persons. But all this will be clarified in court.

Pavlos Psomiadis had created 45 satellite companies to which the money from the insurance company was forwarded. The following example is typical: the assets of the insurance company were seized in July 2008. Then, it was cnacelled in early 2009, effected again in March 2009 and when the controlling authority decided to inspect the assets it did not find any money in the bank. I.e. there is an order of seizure by a government authority such as the Private Insurance Supervisory Committee to Aspis Bank for money, which was not found subsequently. In this case, the board of the bank is fully responsible. This also remains to be investigated within the case. The last report even mentions that some documents of the Private Insurance Supervisory Committee itself were not found. What had happened to them?

I mean that these are questions the answers of which should be found by the court. We are talking about a huge labyrinth which is hiding data and involved persons, bodies and political parties. So, I think from one perspective, that Pavlos Psomiadis is a scapegoat. He is the root of a huge tree with many branches, which are all the other persons involved. His bank, the board of the bank, the political management of the Ministry of Development, attorneys and lawyers who advised him how to set up his companies, the boards of these companies in Cyprus, Switzerland, Sweden, that managed the money through illicit means, etc.

Therefore, we are confident that we will win the cases. The Deputy Minister of Economy Filippos Sahinidis himself accused soon in parliament the former political leadership of the Ministry of Development that the necessary checks have not been made, from the last Minister Yiannis Papathanasiou to Akis Tsohadzopoulos.