Runaway Greek judge gets 12 years porridge

Justinian's man in Athens, Alex Mitchell, reports on a scandal at the heart of Greece's judicial system ... Glamorous, accused judge does a runner ... Eventually hauled back to face the Athenian courts over perverting the course of justice and money laundering ... How else can you make a living in Greece? 

Former judge Constantina Bourboulia: stock market dabbler and manipulator

YOU'D have to go back to Euripides to find a piece of theatre as comical and theatrical as the contemporary drama starring former Greek judge Constantina Bourboulia.

The vivacious Constantina was a high-profile appointment to the bench in the 1990s by the former socialist Pasok government. 

Apart from balancing the scales of justice, the judge also took a keen interest in the stock market boom that swept Greece in 1990.

Her fortune became so immense she opened a private bank account in Switzerland to take care of the cash.

She also moved into a magnificent new villa in one of the city's poshest suburbs raising the eyebrows of her judicial colleagues who wondered how she had become so financially successful on a public service salary.

In June 2003 a retiring Supreme Court prosecutor Evangelos Kroustallakis proposed an official investigation into the affairs of Judge Bourboulia, arguing that there were indications she had received bribes in return for judicial favours.

One of his other complaints was that Bourboulia had hidden an affair with a Thessaloniki lawyer who was handling a case she was investigating, a fact that normally should have led to her recusal.  

Matters came to a head in 2005 when Judge Bourboulia was tried, found guilty and sentenced to three years and 10 months on misdemeanor charges related to her handling of an investigation of a stock market case in the period 1999-2001.

More charges followed.

In 2006 she was charged with taking payoffs from big businessmen accused of stock market fraud and with the felony of creating a corruption ring between 1998 and 2002. The ring included another judge Evangelos Kalousis and two lawyers. 

She was also charged with taking a 120 million drachma (€350,000) bribe from one of the lawyers to acquit a businessman who faced stock market fraud charges and with taking a 70 million drachma bribe (€205,000) to acquit another businessman of similar charges. 

Out on bail, the capricious judge fled to Paris, causing a storm in the Athenian media and among the angry citizenry.

After four months, and much public agitation, she was tracked down.

Athens columnist George Gilson wrote, a touch whimsically:

"A Europe-wide search for Bourboulia, which involved tracing her credit card and goodness knows what else, ended with the judge being picked up ... outside her sister's house in Paris. Note to myself: When wanted by Interpol, avoid Sue's, Pat's and Deb's homes."

She fought the Athens extradition request claiming, through her ever-helpful sister, that she feared for her life if she was sent back home.

The sister did not offer any advice on who planned to kill Constantina. She also claimed she would not receive a fair trial in Athens and that the arrest warrant was illegal.

She was soon on her way back to Athens where further charges were waiting. 

The long-winded legal battle concluded on July 30 when an appeals court handed her a 12-year jail sentence after she was found guilty of colluding not to bring charges against employees of a company, Sigalas, suspected of misleading stockmarket investors, an abuse of power and money laundering.

The court also passed sentences of between three and 10 years on 10 other people involved in the case, including businessmen and stockbrokers. 

It's not quite over. Throughout the long legal battle, Mrs Bourboulia's legal team has made allegations against unnamed senior figures in Pasok (the Pan Hellenic Socialist Movement) and the conservative New Democracy.

Still to come: the tell-all memoirs, the newspaper serialisation and an opera.

Alex (Aleko) Mitchell is former Sun-Herald state political correspondent and author of Come The Revolution: A Memoir, NewSouth Books 2001.