Greece: Law firm accused of manipulating the Competition Commission

A law firm appears to have filed a number of fabricated complaints with the Hellenic Competition Commission in recent months with the aim of blackmailing the companies accused in those complaints.

The law firm is connected to a former senior member of the independent authority, whose name received a lot of publicity in the media and the justice system in 2006. The firm’s unlawful activity was described on Tuesday by the head of the commission, Dimitris Kyritsakis, during a hearing by the Parliamentary Committee for Institutions and Transparency.

The Competition Commission chief argued that the law firm finds deputies willing to table questions in Parliament regarding complaints submitted for examination by the commission.

According to Kyritsakis, that is intended to pressure the commission to prioritize certain cases, although in 2011 the commission changed its priority assessment criteria, which today are no longer based on the time of a complaint’s submission.

Full Content: Ekathimerini

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