5.  The applicant was born in 1943 and lives in London.
6.  The applicant is of Cypriot origin and has lived all of his adult life in London. In 1997 he and another British national, C.G., bought a plot of land in the Glyfada district of Athens.
7.  In 1998 the applicant and C.G. asked the mortgage registry to register the deed of sale for the land in question. The mortgage registry refused to do so, since the State claimed ownership of the land. According to the Forestry Commission of the Ministry of Agriculture, the land had been classified as part of the forest estate since 1976.
8.  In 2002 the applicant secured an order from the Athens Court of First Instance requiring the mortgage registry to register the deed of sale; the mortgage registry did so on 31 January 2003. The applicant paid the sum of 36,911.63 euros (EUR) in registration fees.
9.  The public prosecutor’s office appealed against the order and succeeded in having it set aside and the registration declared void.
10.  On 29 March 2004 the investigating judge drew up an indictment in respect of the applicant and C.G., accusing the applicant of having forged: (a) a certificate from the tax authorities attesting that he had paid inheritance tax on land valued at EUR 63,768,920, whereas he knew that the land was part of the public forest estate and the tax had not been paid; and (b) a document allegedly issued by the Penteli Forestry Commission attesting that the land was not part of the forest estate. The investigating judge also accused him of having used the forged documents to persuade the administrative authorities that the land was privately owned and could be the subject of a transaction, in particular a deed of transfer.
11.  The file included a handwriting analysis requested by the public prosecutor’s office, dated 29 June 2003 and produced by a lawyer and graphology expert, M.M.K., who had taken an oath on 17 April 2003 to discharge that function. The sixty-two-page report concluded that one of the two documents “appeared to have been entirely written” by the applicant and contained an illegible signature, whereas aspects of the signature on the other document “strongly suggested that it had been added” by the applicant’s co-accused. On 8 May 2003 the applicant, through his lawyer, had appointed another expert, C.T.S., as a “technical adviser” to assist him.
12.  When presenting his defence to the investigating judge on 29 March 2004, the applicant disputed the competence of the graphologist M.M.K. He mentioned that two associations of graphologists of which she had claimed to be a member had stated that they had no knowledge of her and that a British graphologist, F.C., had noted in a report that M.M.K. was not qualified and that her comments were incorrect. However, the applicant did not submit any reports by his own technical adviser.
13.  On 7, 28 and 29 December 2004 the applicant submitted three reports by a different expert, D.K., whom he had instructed. The reports concluded that the documents in issue had not been written by the applicant and that the report by M.M.K. was inaccurate.
14.  On an unspecified date the applicant and C.G. were committed for trial in the Athens Criminal Court of Appeal, sitting as a bench of three judges, on charges of forgery and the use of forged documents.
15.  The hearing, concerning not only the applicant but also other individuals whose cases had been joined to his, was initially set down for 8 May 2006 and was then adjourned until 30 October 2006 and subsequently 12 March 2007, as the defendants’ lawyers were unable to attend. It eventually took place on 12, 14 and 20 March 2007.
16.  On 12 March 2007 counsel for the applicant asked the president of the Criminal Court of Appeal to call M.M.K. and D.K. to give evidence. The president adjourned the hearing and directed that the public prosecutor’s office was to ensure the attendance of the two experts. On the resumption of the hearing on 14 March 2007, only D.K. was present; he confirmed the findings set out in his three reports. No explanation was given for M.M.K.’s absence. Subsequently, all the evidence was read out (105 documents running to a total of more than 1,500 pages), including the report by M.M.K., the defence witnesses gave testimony, and counsel for the defence asked questions and made their submissions without mentioning the need to examine other witnesses. At the end of the hearing, the president asked all the parties to the proceedings whether they wanted any additional examinations or explanations, but they replied in the negative.
17.  On 20 March 2007 the Criminal Court of Appeal found the applicant guilty of forgery and the use of forged documents and sentenced him in absentia to twelve years’ imprisonment. Addressing the findings of M.M.K.’s report, it noted the following:
“The forgery of the aforementioned certificates by the first two defendants has been validly proved beyond all doubt, in particular through the handwriting analysis by the graphology expert M.M.K., the contents of which the court finds entirely convincing; in addition, the report’s credibility is backed up by the documents in the file and the witness testimony. It can be established with little effort from an assessment of these items of evidence that the certificates were forged by the defendants, who, moreover, were the only people with an interest in taking such action.”
18.  On 20 March 2007 the applicant appealed against that judgment to the Athens Criminal Court of Appeal, sitting as a bench of five judges. The hearing, which had initially been set down for 6 February 2009, was adjourned until 20 November 2009 and subsequently 19 March 2010, as counsel for the defendant was unable to attend.
19.  The hearing eventually took place on 19, 26 and 29 March and 8 April 2010. The Court of Appeal upheld the applicant’s conviction in his absence but reduced his sentence to eleven years’ imprisonment. At the end of the hearing, counsel for the defence asked the Court of Appeal to examine D.P. as a witness, and also the experts D.K. and M.M.K.
20.  The Criminal Court of Appeal refused the request in respect of all the witnesses mentioned, holding as follows:
“The defendants’ request to call the graphologist [M.M.K.] and the witness [D.P.] cannot be accepted as it is not deemed necessary in view of the evidence gathered so far. The graphologist [M.M.K.] has produced a detailed analytical report, which has been read out in court ...
With regard to the forged documents, several expert reports have been submitted and read out; accordingly, the attendance of these witnesses is also unnecessary on account of the evidence gathered. The defendants who are asking for the above-mentioned witnesses to be called to testify in court have, moreover, not stated the reason for their request ...”
21.  As regards the expert report by M.M.K., the Court of Appeal held that the applicant had had no factual or legal basis for challenging it, and that his objections were contradicted by the factual circumstances, which were established and undisputed. Summing up, over six pages, the factual circumstances as established by the documents and the witness testimony, the Court of Appeal also mentioned the findings of M.M.K.’s report, describing it as “detailed” while adding:
“The contents and conclusions of the handwriting analysis by M.M.K. are convincing and consistent with the documents issued by the tax authorities, the Forestry Commission, the Criminal Investigation Department and the other documents that have been read out, and also with the witness testimony.”
22.  On 15 February 2010 the applicant appealed on points of law. He alleged that there had been a violation of Article 6 § 3 (d) of the Convention in that he had been convicted solely on the basis of the report by M.M.K., without having been allowed to cross-examine her at the hearings in the courts of first instance and appeal. The applicant relied on an extensive body of the Court’s case-law in this area and even reproduced the relevant passages, translated into Greek, of seven judgments of the Court. He pointed out that although his counsel had asked both the first-instance and the appellate court to examine M.M.K., she had not appeared in court despite having been called to give evidence. He noted that in the appeal proceedings the defendants’ request had been refused on the grounds that M.M.K. had produced a detailed analytical report, the conclusions of which had been read out in court. Nevertheless, the applicant had been deprived of his right to cross-examine her.
23.  The hearing, which had been set down for 1 April 2011, was postponed until 18 November 2011 at the applicant’s request. In a judgment of 5 April 2012 (finalised on 7 May 2012 and certified as authentic on 4 July 2012) the Court of Cassation dismissed the appeal on points of law. In response to the ground of appeal alleging a violation of Article 6 § 3 (d), it held:
“... However, these requests [by the defendants], as formulated, were wholly vague and the court ... was not obliged to reply to them in detail. Nevertheless, the court rejected the requests in the following terms, on sufficient and substantiated grounds: ‘The defendants’ request to call the graphologist [M.M.K.] and the witness [D.P.] cannot be accepted as it is not deemed necessary in view of the evidence gathered so far. The graphologist [M.M.K.] has produced a detailed analytical report, which has been read out in court ... The defendants who are asking for the above-mentioned witnesses to be called to testify in court have, moreover, not stated the reason for their request ...’ Accordingly, the ground of appeal submitted to that end by John Constantinides, alleging a violation of Article 510 § 1 (a) and (d) [failure to provide specific reasons] of the Code of Criminal Procedure, is unfounded and must be dismissed, since no provision relating to the accused’s defence rights has been infringed, whether Article 6 § 3 (d) of the Convention or the constitutional requirement to provide detailed and specific reasons for a judicial decision.”
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