How the world sees Greece
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece's radical left government is accusing a Canadian-run mining firm of holding the 2,000 workers in its northern Greek mines "hostage" in a dispute over alleged violations of concession terms.
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ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greece's radical left government is accusing a Canadian-run mining firm of holding the 2,000 workers in its northern Greek mines "hostage" in a dispute over alleged violations of concession terms.
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The Council of State, Greece’s supreme court struck down a request filed by two citizens that asked for the cancellation of Sunday’s referendum. The court heard the arguments in favor and against the request earlier in the day. The 21 members of the court then convened to decided to reject it. Nikos Sakellariou, the vice-president of the Council of State, made the announcement. Spiros Nickolaou, a lawyer and Dimitris Manaou, an engineer, had filed a lawsuit asking for the cancellation of the referendum, calling the decision by the ministerial council and the Presidnetial Decree unconstitutional and illegal. On the other hand a number of lawyers who are in favor of the referendum taking place had counter-argued that the question and terms of the referendum are clear to the people. The lawyers as well as representatives of the Greek state argued that this is not an issue for the supreme court because this is a government ratified decision and the responsible authority for this matter is the electoral court. Nikolaou noted that the electoral court would make the decision after the referendum and argued that the President’s Decree for the referendum is beyond the constitution as therefore there is no legal framework for the referendum.
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The lawyer who sued Uber and Lyft for not classifying contract workers as employees is now representing workers against four more on-demand companies: delivery services Postmates and Instacart, laundry service Washio, shipping company Shyp. "I hope companies realize this isn’t something to fool around with," said their lead attorney, Shannon Liss-Riordan. "They’re violating labor laws." Workers from Postmates, Shyp, and Washio sued their employers this week, arguing that they should be classified as employees and not independent contractors. Liss-Riordan filed all three cases on June 29. In addition, while there's already a case against Instacart in California, Liss-Riordan has filed a different class-action case against Instacart on June 30, but limited to Massachusetts. Liss-Riordan is already fighting to reclassify Uber and Lyft drivers in two cases that will go to a jury trial in August. She's also filed lawsuits against cleaning service Homejoy, food delivery startup Caviar, and a different case against Postmates on behalf of its couriers. The Shyp, Instacart, and Postmates customer service cases were filed as "class action arbitration demands" in arbitration courts because of their contracts, Liss-Riordan said. Postmates did not return a request for comment. Washio and Instacart had no comment, and Shyp was still reviewing the claim. (We'll update this post as we hear back.) The lawsuits strike at the core of the so-called "1099 economy" The difference between the 1099 workers and W-2 employees, according to the IRS, is that for common-law employees, employers "must withhold income taxes, withhold and pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, and pay unemployment tax on wages paid." The same is not necessarily true for an independent contractor. In addition, benefits are often extended to employees but not independent contractors, and employers have the right to control how a worker behaves — how to dress, for example, or specific customer interaction protocol — when they're an employee and not an independent contractor. Each of these new filings alleges different ways each company is controlling their workers, which may indicate that they are employees under law. Washio hires drivers, or "ninjas," to deliver laundry as part of its on-demand laundry and dry cleaning service. According to the court filing, the company makes Washio drivers agree to an exclusivity arrangement, where they agree not to provide service for similar businesses. They're also paid a fee for each pick-up and delivery, the complaint alleges. Shyp's couriers operate in a similar way to Washio's, although its "Heroes" get paid hourly to pick-up packages. They're instructed to "always bubblewrap fragile items" and claim to receive warnings for rejecting too many pick-ups, the arbitration demand alleges. In the newest claim against Postmates, pay for its customer service reps is the issue. According to the arbitration demand, the representatives make 35 cents for each delivery they facilitate. If a store doesn't pick up the phone, the representative has to call back four times in two minutes before doing a search to see if the business is closed, the claim alleges. One plaintiff estimated in the arbitration demand that she worked 30 hours in April 2015, but only made $45.85 for 131 calls. "I’ve been amazed to see how far companies are stretching it. So many companies just seem to watched what Uber did and think it’s ok," Liss-Riordan said. "It’s like they just sort of assumed they don’t have to worry about it. I just find it unbelievable." The issue is starting to gain steam after the California Labor Commission ruled last month that an Uber driver, who filed a suit against the company for misclassifying her as an independent contractor, was actually an employee. Shyp, the package shipping service, announced Wednesday that it would be reclassifying all of its couriers as employees. The change is effective immediately as it rolls out to new cities like Chicago. For existing workers, employee status will begin January 1, 2016, according to Fast Company. A company spokesperson said the decision has had nothing to do with the arbitration demand. Instacart announced in June that it would also transition some of its shoppers to W2-employees in select markets. Liss-Riordan called the moves to reclassify contractors as employees "a step in the right direction." Should her cases win in court, Liss-Riordan said the companies would only be responsible for back pay up until the date they are switched over to employee status. Companies that do switch can "limit their exposure moving forward," she said. "FedEx battled me for 10 years," Liss-Riordan said. "I’m ready to hang in there and fight for for however long they want to fight." SEE ALSO: This lawyer fought for FedEx drivers and strippers. Now she's standing up for Uber drivers Join the conversation about this story » NOW WATCH: 6 mind-blowing facts about Greece's economy
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After being slapped with an 11.4-million-euro fine in May for failing to shut down dozens of illegal landfills, Greece may face an additional penalty of at least 14.5 million euros on Tuesday if the European
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A corruption prosecutor on Monday brought criminal charges of active bribery against four representatives of the Greek branch
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A group of Bangladeshi strawberry pickers who were shot and wounded when they asked to be paid have been fined by a Greek court.
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Another 32 individuals were indicted to stand trial before a Criminal Appeals Court on Thursday for kickbacks given in exchange for Greek Defense Ministry contracts. The case, concerning a deal for the purchase of German submarines, was uncovered during a major and ongoing corruption investigation into the period when the now jailed Greek former Minister Akis Tsochatzopoulos was at the helm of the Defense Ministry. The indictment relates to illegal and non-transparent payments made for the purchase of submarines by the Hellenic Navy in contracts signed between the Defense Ministry and German firm HDW-Ferrostaal. The Appeals Court justices found that 32 individuals should be tried on charges relating to acts of giving and accepting bribes, breach of faith and money laundering, among them business people and members of the military. In each case, the charges are aggravated by legal provisions concerning embezzlement from the public sector. The indictments are in line with the recommendation made by Greek Appeals Court Public Prosecutor Efstathios Vergonis, who said that 32 of the 37 people charged in connection with the case should stand trial. The defendants are allegedly involved in the movement and concealment of the illegal sums, which are believed to exceed 60 million euros, and were primarily moved via two companies. The evidence was judged insufficient to support the charges against the wife of former arms dealer Panos Efstathiou, as well as defendants Georgios Agouridis, Petros and Georgios Christodoulidis, and Georgios Kamaris. Among those to stand trial are shipowner Michael Matantos, businessman Alexandros Avataggelos, former deputy director for procurements at the Defense Ministry Antonis Kantas, bankers Jean-Claude Oswald and Fanis Lyginos, arms dealer Panagiotis Efstathiou, lawyer Spiros Metaxas, former Tsochatzopoulos associates Yiannis Beltsios and Pavlos Nikolaidis, former head of Hellenic Shipyards Sotiris Emmanouil, former general secretary for arms procurements Spiros Travlos and several others. The indictment ordered the continued imprisonment on remand for Kantas, who has been in custody pending trial for 12 months already. It allowed the release of Beltsios with restrictions until trial, on a 500,000-euro bail, forbidding him to leave the country and requiring that he reports to a police station twice a month. The appeals justices also agreed to a request by Emmanouil to reduce the bail for his release from 2 million euros to 500,000. (source: ana-mpa)
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by Associated Press Judge, citing state secrets, throws out lawsuit over Iran Associated Press - 23 March 2015 19:03-04:00 NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge citing national security concerns has thrown out a New York defamation lawsuit against a wealthy Greek shipping magnate brought against a nonprofit organization seeking to thwart Iran's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. Judge Edgardo Ramos issued his written ruling Monday. He says the government had shown there was no solution that would allow the litigation to proceed while also safeguarding state secrets. The ruling came in a lawsuit billionaire Victor Restis brought against the American Coalition Against Nuclear Iran in 2013. Restis says the group was trying to ruin his reputation by falsely claiming he did business with Iran. His attorney Abbe Lowell says he's disappointed by the decision. A government spokeswoman has declined to comment. News Topics: General news, Lawsuits, Legal proceedings, Law and order People, Places and Companies: Abbe Lowell, Iran, Middle East Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Judge cites state secrets in dismissing Greek businessman's lawsuit against anti-Iran group
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The European Court of Human Rights on Thursday ordered Greece to pay a total of 82,600 euros in compensation to 5 applicants who filed complaints with regard to the conditions of their detention in Korydallos, Larissa and Diavata prisons.
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A Greek court has charged 64 people including 13 Germans with bribery involving Siemens AG, Germany's and Europe's biggest industrial giant. An investigation covering the period from 1992 to 2006 allegedly found that Greece had incurred losses of about € ...
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Michalis Christoforakos is among the 64 people who are summoned to appear before an Appeals Court, accused of being involved in the bribery scandal between Siemens and Greek state-owned telecommunications company OTE that rocked Greece nearly ten years ago. The 64 suspects face criminal charges of active and passive bribery, money laundering, as well as illicit payments for contracts signed between the colossal German company and OTE. They are summoned to appear before a Greek Appeals Court, accused of being involved in a contract, known as the “8002 agreement,” which concerns supplying telecommunications equipment to digitize OTE’s network for €464.5 million. The 64 suspects list to face trial includes Theodoros Tsoukatos, an associate of former Greek Prime Minister Costas Simitis. Other defendants include former executive officers of Siemens in Greece Christos Karavelas, Ilias Georgiou, Prodromos Mavridis, 13 former officers of Siemens in Germany, as well as former executive officers of OTE.
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Rheinnmetall, a German arms and defense systems supplier, received a 37.1-million-euro fine for bribing Greek officials. A company representative is being accused of bribing officials in Greece in order to close armament deals. The prosecutors from Bremen, Germany, who were researching the case, have decided to impose a fine to the company’s subsidiary Rheinmetall Defence Electronics. According to the company, the fine payment “will end legal proceedings over the alleged unauthorized payments.” Furthermore, Rheinmetall stated that the group was accused of “failing to detect and prevent suspicious payments to sales partners due to inadequate internal controls.” However, the company did not elaborate on the matter. The investigation was part of a wide corruption inquiry regarding armament deals in Greece .
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The indictment before the three-member Felonies Court of Appeals of Greek Social Security Fund (IKA) chief Rovertos Spyropoulos on charges of infidelity, called with his suggestion a Greek prosecutor. The case concerns the lifting of the accounts’ confiscation decision imposed on supermarket chain “Arvanitidis,” which had some 18 million euros of debts to IKA. The prosecution motion also suggested the trial referral of the company’s two owners, with charges of moral instigation. The prosecutor suggested that Spyropoulos’ decision caused financial damage to the Fund. According to the prosecutor’s indictment, the company, based in northern Greece, on September 25, 2013, owed an amount of around 18 million euros to IKA, for the collection of which the local IKA office proceeded to levy actions against the company’s legal representative, providing him a 15-day period so that after the payment of a portion of the total amount, the company would benefit from debt restructuring. The IKA chief is accused that, without a previous formal application filed by the company, ordered the local IKA office to temporary lift the seizure so that the company would proceed with its staff payments, debt reconstruction etc. The head of the local IKA office rejected Spyropoulos’ request and informed his superiors that the seizure lifting he ordered is not based on any official provision, while he also informed him that the company was asked to settle the debt and it did not. On October 17, 2013, according to the indictment, Spyropoulos sent a second letter, calling again for the seizure lifting until November 15, 2013. The local IKA head complied with the order but once again expressed his legal reservations. After the seizure lifting, the company did not settle its debt and on November 18, a new foreclosure process was ordered. In the meantime, though, hundreds of thousands of euros were deposited in the company’s bank accounts but its debt to IKA was still not settled, while the owner withdrew some 1.35 million euros. Spyropoulos denies the accusations, arguing that all his actions were lawful. IKA is the largest Social Security Fund in Greece. It covers 5,530,000 workers and employees and provides 830,000 Greeks with retirement pension.
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The European Court of Justice on Tuesday imposed a 10-million-euro fine on Greece for failing to close down dozens of illegal landfills and comply with European waste management directives and ordered the country to pay an additional 14.5 million euros fo... ...
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The Greek Police Cyber Crime Unit has brought a case of intellectual property violation to light. Members of the unit conducted an online investigation and presented their data to Athens’ District Attorney, who requested a preliminary examination.
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FilmOn, a free TV streaming service highlighted this week by Forbes as one of the 10 companies changing the TV industry, is suing online ad verification service DoubleVerify for blacklisting the site as “copyright infringing” and “adult content." FilmOn alleges that these classifications could result in the site losing out on millions of dollars of ad revenue from wary advertisers. FilmOn provides hundreds of live TV channels and on-demand programming to the web, both for free and with some content behind a subscription. It says its current service is within the realm of the law and that it should not be treated as a copyright infringer. The company is also meeting with US regulators the FTC next week to see if it can become recognized as a cable system, which would enable it to pay retransmission fees to broadcasters and stream hundreds more channels for free. FilmOn CEO, Greek billionaire and media entrepreneur Alki David, told Business Insider it has been so difficult to redress the issue with DoubleVerify, his company was left with no option but to sue in order to raise awareness of the issue to the wider industry and hopefully remove the tarnish from its name in the eyes of potential advertisers. “To tell you the truth, the reason we brought the suit is to shed light that they are d-----bags, that they are people who throw legitimate companies under the bus in order to generate a body count,” David said. David could not confirm how much in damages FilmOn is seeking from DoubleVerify, but the suit, filed in the Superior Court in Los Angeles earlier this week, suggests DoubleVerify’s actions have caused “millions of dollars in damages by improperly disrupting FilmOn’s efforts to market content it owns.” FilmOn’s argument is that DoubleVerify is “willfully misclassifying” FilmOn (and potentially other websites) because it is in DoubleVerify’s business interests to do. DoubleVerify makes the majority of its money by running analyses of websites for brands and agencies to ensure those websites don’t house any fraudulent non-human traffic (otherwise known as bots), that they are safe for brands to advertise against (no porn, pirated, or other nefarious material), and that ads are in a prominent enough position that people will see them. A DoubleVerify spokeswoman sent Business Insider this statement: "DoubleVerify delivers impartial, industry-accredited information for the world's largest brands to provide transparency and accountability in online advertising. Transparency threatens those companies whose business models are predicated on practices that some advertisers may naturally want to avoid. We firmly believe that the FilmOn lawsuit is without merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves against frivolous attempts to stifle an advertiser's ability to make fully-informed marketing decisions." The suit also alleges DoubleVerify is producing malware, bad software that can be designed to scrape people's computers for data and for other malicious purposes. FilmOn says it has reported this to the FBI in the US and Scotland Yard in the UK. In response to the malware allegation, DoubleVerify says: "Further, it is irresponsible to suggest that a third party verification service such as ours is directly supporting the same kind of malicious activity that we are focused on eliminating. All of the DoubleVerify verification practices and processes are continuously accredited for their accuracy and integrity by the MRC (Media Rights Council). Since our company started more than 6 years ago this is the first suit like this we have ever received. In the past year, several of the largest movie studios and TV broadcasters have sued FilmOn for the illegal distribution of their copyrighted materials online. Separately, the Wall Street Journal reported this week that AOL video exchange Adap.tv is one of the more prominent advertising clients that recently stopped working with FilmOn. The report suggests Adapt.tv’s checks found that FilmOn was disseminating “bot” traffic — a practice bad publishers use to inflate their traffic in the hope of hiking up their ad rates. David dismisses these claims as “absolute rubbish” and says that while FilmOn works with a number of affiliate partners, it would never sell on illegitimate traffic to advertisers — and that the company still has a partnership with Adap.tv. FilmOn also works with a research partner, MDot, which flags up potential bots, and issues can be resolved “within minutes,” FilmOn commercial director Jill Brook told Business Insider. Alongside FilmOn, David — heir to the Coca Cola Hellenic shipping and bottling company —also owns home shopping website 9021go.com, the BattleCam.com p2p streaming site and modeling agency Independent Models.SEE ALSO: Google Has Tweaked Its Algorithm To Make It Even Harder To Find Movies On Sites Like Pirate Bay Join the conversation about this story »
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A Greek shipping tycoon and two New York hedge funds have been found liable to pay the final costs in Gulf Keystone Petroleum's billion-dollar ...
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An Athens Court of First Instance prosecutor has brought criminal charges of fraud against four Greek companies believed to have pocketed millions of euros in European Commission subsidies while judicial authorities have asked their counterparts in Brusse... ...
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