An accountant accused of embezzling 450,000 euros from a construction company that participates in the consortium building Thessaloniki’s metro was jailed on Thursday.
The judges found her guilty without recognizing any mitigative circumstances. In her testimony, the accountant appeared remorseful, expressing her regret for betraying the trust of her employers. Through her attorney, she said she began attending a treatment program for gambling addiction.
The judicial investigation started in July 2020, after the construction company filed a criminal action against the accountant who had worked there for number of years. The crime began to unravel earlier, when an employee of a bank where the company kept a business account noticed suspicious transactions and alerted the client.
An investigation carried out by chartered accountants established that between March 2019 and May 2020, the defendant had successively transferred – without the knowledge of her superiors – large sums of money from the specific account to her personal account and to an online gaming company. To justify the illegal transfers, she had attributed them to alleged payments and advances to suppliers and employees, and various company expenses.