A Thessaloniki court on Tuesday handed down a six-month suspended prison sentence to a chestnut seller who was arrested last Friday in central Thessaloniki for trading without a license.
The 61-year-old told the court that he had been selling roast chestnuts off a cart for years in central Thessaloniki.
He said he had a five-year license which expired in 2007 and that he was unable to renew it due to financial constraints, noting that he has debts of 150,000 euros in tax and national insurance contributions and the heavy fines that go with unpaid debts to the state.
“I don’t want to have debts. I just want a license to sell chestnuts and make a living,” he said, adding that he has eight siblings.
The 61-year-old rebuffed claims that he verbally insulted the police officers who arrested him, claiming that he briefly fainted during the inspection but then followed the officers to the local precinct.
Public outrage broke out in Greece and the #kastana hashtag caught fire after 10 policeman arrested the chestnut seller last Friday.
Later, the man confessed that he didn’t have a license to sell chestnuts due to the fact that he owed money to his social security fund (TEVE), and for this reason, the tax office would not renew his license.
Police sources claim that they were merely carrying out their duties in a clamp down against tax evasion but they failed to answer why they don’t show the same brute force when dealing with other and perhaps better connected, large debt owners.
This latest police coup follows other police successes such as the capture of another chestnut vendor at Karditsa, an elderly sidestreet incense seller at Heraklion, Crete, and another elderly woman selling herbs on sidewalk in Trikala, at the Peloponnese.
The time fits the crime?
As for the six month suspended sentence for selling chestnuts without a license, our street vendor got off lightly. Some other severe sentences handed out recently by Greek courts in high profile cases included:
The sentence of former Greek Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou who in March 2015 has been given a suspended 12-month sentence by Greece’s special court for tampering with the contents of a stick containing the names of Greek depositors in a Swiss branch of HSBC Bank.
Also in March 2015 an Athens court handed investigative journalist Kostas Vaxevanis a 26 month suspended sentence after was found guilty of criminally defaming well-known Greek businessman Andreas Vgenopoulos for his alleged role in the 2012-2013 Cyprus financial crisis.
