Section 231: Privileged and Confidential Evidence

Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section

1. Supreme Court Judgment No. 2689/2560 (2017)

   Section 231 lets a party or other person required to testify or to produce evidence refuse where the material is a document or statement that is still an official secret, a confidence obtained in the course of a profession or duty, or a method or formula the law protects from disclosure. Here the court of first instance held an inquiry under Section 231 and ruled that the members of the National Anti-Corruption Commission need not produce the summoned documents, and it treated an appeal against that order as barred by Section 196. The Supreme Court did not reach the point: sitting in plenary session 16/2559 it held that a private plaintiff has no power to prosecute Commission members in the ordinary courts at all, because the Organic Acts route such cases to the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Persons Holding Political Positions.

   The plaintiff had asked the trial court to summon documents from the defendants, and after an inquiry the court ordered that they need not produce them yet. The Supreme Court, in plenary session (16/2559), decided the case on a different ground: the plaintiff had no power to bring a charge against the second to eighth defendants, commissioners of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, in the ordinary court, because the Organic Acts give a special route to the Supreme Court's Criminal Division for Persons Holding Political Positions. The Court of Appeal had rightly dismissed the application, and it was unnecessary to decide the plaintiff's other grounds, including the one about the order on production of documents.

Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.