Interpol had issued an international “red notice” for their arrest following the arrest warrant that was issued by Greek authorities.
It should be reminded that Griveas is among a group of prominent entrepreneurs who are entangled in the Hellenic Postbank banking scandal. In 2009 the couple applied for loans from the bank and they were granted immediately, without any securities or guarantees even though the couples combined assets at the time were less than 3 million Euros. It was revealed that the couple acquired these funds in March and July of 2009 for a new company that they created titled C & C International as part of a plan to attract conventions, particularly medical.
Authorities investigating that case have already frozen the couple’s assets and have asked judicial authorities to access their personal and corporate accounts.
The well over 400 million Euro crony loans scandal is being investigated by Athens deputy anti corruption prosecutor, Popi Papandreou, and from what has been published in the press so far it concerns massive loans that were granted by Hellenic Postbank to leading Greek entrepreneurs without any collateral.
As it turned out, most of this capital ended up in offshore accounts or was used to buy foreign properties abroad.
Prosecutors have linked at least 25 people to this case.
Angelos Filippidis, who served as chairman of the bank between 2007-2009, apparently played a central role in the scandal by “abusing his position”, estimating that loans to the value of at least 347 million Euros were issued “beyond any acceptable banking criteria”.
One of the accused, Dimitris Kontominas (74), the owner of Alpha TV and chairman of Demco Insurance, apparently received 110.5 million in unsecured loans from October 2008 to 2012. A report in Eleftherotypia claims that Kontominas did not use these loans for business purposes, but he rather used them to buy properties in London for his daughter. There is also a reference to a credit card company titled Postcredit, which Hellenic Postbank ran in collaboration with Kontominas, (the collaboration is suspected of costing the bank in excess of 130 million Euros).
Another prominent businessman named in the report is Lavrentis Lavrentiadis, who has been in custody for over a year in relation to his involvement in alleged 700 million Euro embezzlement scandal at the Proton Bank. Hellenic Postbank lent up to 100 million Euros to Lavrentiadis, in his position as head of Alapis pharmaceutical company, without following any risk assessment procedures.