The shareholders
Bearers of Banque d'Orient shares in Greece and across the diaspora. They kept certificates and coupons through the generations, took the case to court and, some of them, spoke in public.
The research began in the early 2000s, in libraries and museums in Greece, the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Egypt. The question was simple: had any accounting statement of the Banque d'Orient's liquidation ever been published? After days at the microfilm reader the answer was no. Everything that followed was built on that answer.
From 2011 the research became official correspondence: letters to NBG, the Bank of Greece, the ministries and the General State Archives. The replies, almost all negative, became evidence. In 2014 NBG answered that the merger contract "is not located in the bank's archive" D47, and the Ministry of Development certified that no document of completion was ever filed D44.
This work was never one person's. It was done by bearers from Greece and the diaspora, who filed 105 exhibits at the first trial and a further series on appeal. A few of them have appeared in public under their own names, Eleftherios Rinos among them. Most remain anonymous, like their shares.
Still in the courtroom
Since 2011 no year has passed without a step in court: interim measures for the production of documents in 2012, the application to appoint liquidators in 2013, the action filed on 5 September 2016, the referral to Athens, the trial, the appeal.
Bearers of the community have testified in the civil proceedings, and as witnesses in the criminal cases over the use of the bank's name.
The trial continues and the Shareholders' Community attends every hearing. Given the intransigence of those responsible, we are certain that the case will go through the Supreme Court and the European Court of Human Rights.
The truth, against the Sorras organization
From 2011 Artemis Sorras' organization used the bank's name: "600 billion", "bonds", promises that the debt would vanish. Those claims rested on no document. Not one of the thousands of records in the case file confirms them.
The bearers investigated the claims and publicly refuted them from 2013 on. In 2014 they filed a criminal complaint; the file also holds their notices over the use of the bank's name. Members of the community testified as witnesses in the criminal inquiry that followed and ended in prosecutions.
The stories about bonds and shares of mythical value were not merely false. They harmed the real case. While the public arena filled with imaginary treasures, the one solid question went unanswered: what became of the liquidation account of a contract published in the Government Gazette? Defending the truth also means this: to say plainly that the case is civil, rests on a contract and on documents, and has nothing to do with what the Sorras organization advertises.
The banks never informed the public
The greater responsibility does not lie with those who spread the stories. It lies with the banks. The Banque d'Orient had 280,000 bearer shares of 125 gold francs, in the hands of investors in Greece and abroad D05. Banks and states knew the certificates circulated: they took them on deposit, stamped them, taxed them D34 D35 D36.
And yet the investors were never informed. No accounting statement was published in the companies bulletin, no call went out to the bearers. The "final statement" of 28 December 1936, on which NBG relies, is unsigned, and the newspaper issue in which it is said to have been published cannot be certified D22. No final balance sheet was ever filed with the companies registry D44.
The bearers, often descendants who inherited a certificate, had nowhere to turn. From 2011 the answers were always the same: we were never informed, it cannot be located, it does not exist. That silence was not innocent. It left the certificates in a void where no one could learn what they were worth or whether they were still valid. That is how the way opened for forged certificates and, later, for the Sorras organization, which built its myth of the 600 billion on that void.
Had the banks done the obvious, accounted for the liquidation they had taken on, published the statements of the account, lawfully closed it and called on the bearers, there would have been neither forgery nor myth. They owed the investors information. They never gave it. Others filled the void they left, and the bearers paid the price.