Criminal underworld banker sentenced to seven years in prison

Thanas B., a 53-year-old from Greece, was sentenced to seven years in prison on Thursday by the court in Rotterdam. He was charged with criminal underground banking for hundreds of millions of euros. B. was involved with “severe forms of organized crime,” the court added.

B. admitted a while ago that he “did some things that were wrong,” but according to him, he was nothing more than a messenger who received messages and sent them on. His lawyer denied the claim that he was “an immense banker of the underworld” during the treatment of the case last month. The court, however, saw him as the leader of a criminal organization working on money laundering. “He played an important and indispensable role,” the court added.

The Greek banker gave orders via encrypted communication to a courier network in the Netherlands, which moved almost a quarter of a billion euros in cash for criminals from June 2020 to March 2021. B. allegedly received orders from two people, but the identities of these two people are not yet known.

The network worked from various offices and warehouses in the Netherlands, including in The Hague and Amsterdam. Hidden spaces with money-counting machines and large amounts of cash in big shopping bags were found at these locations. Members of the courier network were sentenced to years-long prison sentences earlier this year.

B. was arrested in Athens on May 31 after the Netherlands requested it. At the end of last year, the Greek man and the Public Prosecution Service looked into the possibility of agreeing on a possible punishment, but the attempts were unsuccessful. The case, therefore, still had to be dealt with on its merits.

A jail sentence of 10 years was recommended by prosecutors against B.