Aegean Marine Board Slips Suit Over Fraud by Ex-CEO Melissanidis

The former board of Aegean Marine Petroleum Network Inc., once the world’s top independent fuel supplier, doesn’t have to face claims that it looked the other way while its ex-CEO, Greek shipping tycoon Dimitris Melissanidis, defrauded the company out of $300 million, a Manhattan federal judge ruled.

“Plaintiff concedes that the company’s board of directors maintained an audit committee of independent directors, and that the audit committee, for the life of the company, retained Deloitte and PwC,” Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald wrote Wednesday.

“While plaintiff contends that this system was neither ‘adequate’ nor ‘appropriate,’ he does not dispute its existence,” ...