ΕλληνικάANONYMIZED PUBLISHABLE EXCERPT
Excerpt from Supreme Court decision No. 912/2026 (First Criminal Division during the judicial recess). The details identifying the accused, the complainant, other persons, judicial officers, the attorney of record, and the case-file, document and decision numbers have been removed. Square brackets [ ] indicate each intervention. Omissions are marked with […]. In all other respects, the text is reproduced as it appears in the copy of the decision.
Decision No. 912/2026
THE SUPREME COURT OF GREECE (AREIOS PAGOS)
FIRST CRIMINAL DIVISION DURING THE JUDICIAL RECESS
The Court was composed of the following Judges: [names of the Presiding Supreme Court Judge and the other Supreme Court Judges].
It convened in public session at its premises on 15 July 2026, in the presence of the Deputy Prosecutor of the Supreme Court [full name] and the Clerk [full name], to hear the application for cassation filed by the defendant and applicant for cassation [full name], resident of [place], who was represented by his attorney of record [full name], seeking to quash decision No. [number]/2025 of the First Three-Member Misdemeanour Court of Athens. [Full name], resident of [place], appeared as the party supporting the prosecution but was not present.
[…]Having heard
The Deputy Prosecutor, who proposed that the challenged decision be quashed in part and that the case be referred back for a new hearing before the same Court, composed of judges other than those who had previously heard the case, and the applicant’s attorney of record, who requested the relief set out in the relevant minutes.
CONSIDERED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAW
- The application for cassation dated 23 March 2026 […] against decision No. [number]/24 October 2025 of the First Three-Member Misdemeanour Court of Athens, sitting as an appellate court, by which the defendant, now applicant for cassation, was found guilty of the offence of violating personal data (infringement of Article 38(1)(a), (2) and (3) of Law 4624/2019, in conjunction with Article 10 of the GDPR), and sentenced to six [6] months’ imprisonment, suspended for three years, was filed in the proper form and within the prescribed time limit […]. For reasons of obvious connection, the application must be heard together (Article 129 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) with the additional grounds submitted on 25 June 2026 and the supplementary additional grounds submitted on 26 June 2026, which were also filed in the proper form and within the prescribed time limit (Article 509 of the Code of Criminal Procedure) […]. Accordingly, both the application for cassation and its additional and supplementary grounds must be formally admitted and then examined as to their merits. […]
[The legal reasoning in paragraphs 2 and 3 of the decision, concerning the elements of the offence under Article 38 of Law 4624/2019 and the requirement for specific and reasoned justification, is discussed in the article and contains no personal data. It may be added verbatim from the official text once it is published on areiospagos.gr.]
- In the present case, as appears from the challenged decision No. [number]/24 October 2025, the Three-Member Misdemeanour Court of Athens, which issued it at second instance, accepted in its reasoning, with regard to the offence of violating personal data (Article 38(1), (2) and (3) of Law 4624/2019), that the following facts were established by the evidence it identified by category (the sworn testimony of the witness examined in court, the documents read out, the minutes of the appealed decision, which were also read out, the defendant’s statement in his defence, and the proceedings as a whole). The facts were stated verbatim as follows:
“It emerged, and the Court was convinced, that the third of the defendant-appellants committed the acts with which he was charged. Specifically, in Athens on 20 November 2018, acting alone, he made data concerning criminal convictions and offences, or related security measures, accessible to persons not entitled to access them. He had obtained those data by intervening, in any manner, in a personal-data filing system, and through this act those persons became aware of the data. More specifically, after gaining access to criminal case file No. [number], in which the defendant […] was the complainant and [names] were the persons complained against, he came into possession of a copy of the above-mentioned document, protocol No. [number], issued by [a service of the Hellenic Police] and forming part of that case file. He submitted it with his reply to the opposing party’s submissions dated 20 November 2018 before the Athens Multi-Member Court of First Instance, in support of his [details] action against [names], thereby making it accessible to persons not entitled to access it, namely the judges and the clerk of that Court. By contrast, no involvement by the first and second defendant-appellants in the acts with which they were charged was established […].”
On the basis of these findings, set out in the reasoning and considered together with the operative part of the challenged decision, the trial court did not provide in its decision the specific and detailed reasoning required by the above provisions of the Constitution and the Code of Criminal Procedure. It failed to set out clearly and fully, without contradictions or logical gaps, the facts established during the hearing that constitute the legal elements of the criminal offence of violating personal data for which the applicant for cassation was convicted. The reasoning of the challenged decision is a faithful copy of its operative part, which itself reproduces the indictment, without adding further details necessary in this case to establish the above offence. The operative part is not so analytical and complete that a distinct statement of reasons would be unnecessary in the circumstances.
In particular, the challenged decision does not explain how the applicant for cassation or another person intervened in the Court’s criminal records archive, where criminal case file No. [number] was kept, in order to obtain a copy of the document referred to in the reasoning from the relevant case file. Nor does it state whether the applicant for cassation was entitled to obtain a copy of that document (depending on whether or not he was a party to the case file). If a third party obtained the copy, the decision does not explain how the document came into that person’s possession. It also fails to state whether the applicant’s copying of, and intervention in, the criminal case file served a purpose different from the one for which he may have been permitted access—namely, a purpose other than supporting his position as a person appearing in support of the prosecution, if he was a party to the above criminal proceedings—and whether the purpose was instead to disclose, without authorization, the contents of the document in another pending case between the parties.
Furthermore, the decision does not state the contents of the disputed document […], so that it cannot be determined whether it contained personal data concerning the complainant, and, more particularly, convictions or pending charges against the complainant for specific offences […], as would be necessary to establish, as an objective element of the offence, the aggravating circumstance under Article 38(3) of Law 4624/2019 [sic]. Consequently, the challenged decision suffers from a lack of specific and detailed reasoning and lacks a lawful basis, since these omissions make it impossible to review whether the substantive criminal provisions of Article 38(1)(a), (2) and (3) of Law 4624/2019 were correctly applied in this case. Those provisions were therefore infringed indirectly.
Accordingly, the related grounds of the present application for cassation and the additional grounds […] provided for in Article 510(1)(D) and (E) of the Code of Criminal Procedure must be upheld as well-founded. The challenged decision must be quashed in its entirety; consideration of the remaining grounds of cassation is unnecessary. The case must be referred back for a new hearing before the same Court that issued the quashed decision, but composed of judges other than those who previously heard the case (Article 519 of the Code of Criminal Procedure).
FOR THESE REASONS
QUASHES in its entirety decision No. [number]/24 October 2025 of the Three-Member Misdemeanour Court of Athens.
REFERS the case back for a new hearing before the same Court, to be composed of judges other than those who previously heard the case.
DELIBERATED and decided in Athens on 27 July 2026.
PRONOUNCED in Athens in a public session in its courtroom on 28 July 2026.
THE PRESIDING SUPREME COURT JUDGE [signature] THE CLERK [signature]