Greek businessman with 199 Airbnb villas on Mykonos hit with huge fine of €995,000

The Dispute Resolution Authority has rejected an appeal by a businessman who runs 199 undeclared luxury villas on Mykonos and upheld a fine.

The tax control mechanism identified him several months ago: through a short-term rental platform, he rented out villas in Mykonos for prices exceeding 40,000 euros per week.

AADE auditors found that the manager “forgot” to indicate the registration number of each villa in the Register of Short-Term Rentals and imposed a fine of 5,000 euros on each villa. Overall an enterprising businessman was fined a huge sum of 995,000 euros.

He immediately contacted the Dispute Resolution Directorate with a request to cancel the fine, he writes. newsbeast.gr. In his appeal, he claimed that he was not the manager of the properties in question, as he was not the owner of any of the villas. No statement of lease had been submitted by any of the owners for the properties for which he had been fined, and no owner had submitted a declaration of the property. rental information to make him the administrator. He also listed the names of the owner-managers of the properties and their registration numbers (AMA).

ΔΕΔ reviewed his application and issued a decision a few days ago, in which rejected the businessman's appeala manager of luxury homes, upheld the fine of 995,000 euros, considering that it had been imposed correctly, since the investigation established:

• The applicant (businessman) rented out 199 properties (luxury housing in Mykonos) for short-term rent in September 2022.
• He posted real estate properties on the website without indicating the registration number in the Register of Short-Term Property.
• On the same website it was possible to “book” real estate and pay for it through bank accounts in Belgium and the UK.
• According to information obtained from the UK Business Register, the owner of the business is the applicant. The website presents the applicant as a manager of luxury villas.
• The bank accounts through which payments are made belong to the company.

The court's decision noted that the applicant posted the disputed real estate objects on digital platforms without the mandatory inclusion of registration numbers in the “Register of Short-Term Real Estate”acting as the actual sub-tenant of the property and therefore as a “short-term property manager.”

It is worth noting that the businessman appealed to the Athens Administrative Court of Appeal, which ruled that it was not competent to hear the case, which he referred to the Council of State.

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