{"id":37519,"date":"2019-07-07T14:15:37","date_gmt":"2019-07-07T11:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/articles\/ypobolh-katastaseon-sthn-trapeza\/"},"modified":"2019-07-10T10:28:49","modified_gmt":"2019-07-10T07:28:49","slug":"financial-statements-submission-to-the-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/articles\/financial-statements-submission-to-the-bank\/","title":{"rendered":"Submission of financial statements to the BoG"},"content":{"rendered":"

The requirement to submit a company\u2019s financial statements to the Bank of Greece: <\/strong>(one more headache)<\/h2>\n

Preamble<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Mules are known, among other things, for their patience, persistence, strength and ability to carry heavy loads. In the western world mule have been widely used -up until World War II.<\/p>\n

In Arabic countries that is the job for camels.<\/p>\n

In our country that is what companies do.<\/p>\n

The keeper of the animal has always been (and still is) under the impression that the animal (mule or camel) can carry \u201csomething more\u201d. It is obvious: that cannot always be the case. Brits use the phrase \u201cthe last straw\u201d. To be more precise: \u201cthe last straw which breaks the camel’s back\u201d: that insignificant load that will kill the poor animal.<\/p>\n

There is not such a phrase in Greek, at least none that I know of. Maybe that is why companies are still used here: because they have all the aforementioned traits of a mule.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One, more, obligation: the submission of a legal entity\u2019s financial statements to the Bank of Greece<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A recent act of the Governor of the Bank of Greece [2682\/3.6.2019 -published in the Government Gazette B 2453\/2019 -as part of the obligations imposed on the Bank of Greece by the\u00a0European Central Bank \u2013 Regulation (EC) 2533\/1998 of 23.11.1998-article 5 \u00a71 and 6 \u00a74], \u201cnonfinancial legal entities that are S.A.s (listed or unlisted), private limited companies, <\/em>limited partnerships with a share capital or private limited companies and that are obligated, per article 1 Act 4308\/2014, to prepare annual financial statements have to, along with publishing them, submit them to the Bank of Greece by filling out a specific \u201cfinancial statements\u201d template, which is attached to this Act and is an integral part of it<\/em>.\u201d (article 1).<\/p>\n

In other words:<\/p>\n

S.A., public limited liability, private limited and limited partnerships with a share capital companies are obligated, from now on, to submit to the Bank of Greece their financial statements by \u201cfilling out\u201d certain financial statement templates the Bank of Greece approves.<\/p>\n

So just publishing their financial statements is not enough for these legal entities. It is also mandatory to submit them to the Bank of Greece, conforming to a certain template.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Time of the disclosure and what it entails <\/strong><\/h3>\n

The first submission of the aforementioned legal entities\u2019 financial statements will take place from the 1st<\/sup> till the 30 of November 2019. Said financial statements will regard the accounting years of: (a) 2016 (for the accounting years ending from 1.4.2016 till 31.3.2017), (b) 2017 (for the accounting years ending from 1.4.2017 till 31.3.2018) and (c) 2018 (for the accounting years ending from 1.4.2018 till 31.3.2019),<\/p>\n

Regarding the following accounting years, the submission of the relevant data to the Bank of Greece will take place at the same time with their publication, as dictated by law.<\/p>\n

In any case (article 5) \u201cthe Bank of Greece maintains the right to request additional data and clarifications regarding the data already submitted by businesses\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The<\/strong> sanctions<\/strong><\/h3>\n

In case of incomplete, incorrect or late submission of the aforementioned data by the businesses, the sanctions that \u00a0may be imposed on them are those described in article 2 and 55C of the Statute of the Bank of Greece,\u00a0 and they are not at all (at least the maximum penalties) insignificant: a bit less than three hundred thousand (!) euros and in case of\u00a0 repeated infringement, a bit less than six hundred thousand (!) euros.<\/p>\n

In other words: exhausting \u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The<\/strong> reactions<\/strong><\/h3>\n

A recent letter, signed by the Accountant Association of Athens on the 25.6.2019 and sent to the Governor of the Bank of Greece and the Union of\u00a0 Hellenic Chambers of Commerce, is protesting about the situation every Greek business experiences: \u201cUnfortunately, until today, we have been obligated to send the same data to different agencies too many times, while this information is already available to a state agency\u201d.<\/p>\n

What is requested with this letter is what should be a given in the first place, which is \u201cthe direct interconnection between the databases of Hellenic Business Registry with the databases of the Bank of Greece\u201d.<\/p>\n

What all Greek businesses experience is pointed out as well: the imposition of an additional expense on their operation due to the state\u2019s disinterest or incompetence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/h3>\n

While reading the abovementioned letter, I remembered something that happened when I first started practicing law (late \u201890s): A fellow lawyer from Frankfurt visited my office. He saw me sticking stamps on a lawsuit I was preparing to file. He started laughing. I was surprised. \u201cWhat are these\u201d he asked, pointing to the stamps (which he had never seen before and which he had no idea what they were used for). I explained to him. He laughed even more. I remained surprised (and sad\u2026) until about two years ago, when this kind of bureaucracy came to an end.<\/p>\n

Always MANY years behind.<\/p>\n

The Greek State continues to, most of the times, not choose to self-improve. It just opts out for the easy way: the pass of its own obligations on to the businesses. It operates with the certainty that the \u201cmule\u201d can carry \u201csomething more\u201d.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, the State is right to do so according to its logic (unless this \u201csomething\u201d turns to be the \u201clast straw\u201d for some of them\u2026)<\/h3>\n

\"stavros-koumentakis\"<\/p>\n

Stavros Koumentakis<\/a>
\nSenior Partner<\/em><\/h4>\n

P.S. A brief version of this article has been published in MAKEDONIA Newspaper (July, 7th, 2019).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The requirement to submit a company\u2019s financial statements to the Bank of Greece: (one more headache) Preamble Mules are known, among other things, for their patience, persistence, strength and ability to carry heavy loads. In the western world mule have been widely used -up until World War II. In Arabic countries that is the job…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37532,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[206],"tags":[154],"class_list":["post-37519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","tag----en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37519"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37534,"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37519\/revisions\/37534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/koumentakislaw.gr\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}