A previously undisclosed court ruling from the summer of 2022 is casting a long shadow over how Greek authorities handled the OPEKEPE agricultural subsidy scandal — raising serious questions about whether the full extent of the affair could have been uncovered years earlier.
The ruling, revealed by newspaper TA NEA, shows that a judicial council in Athens voted in August 2022 to block the extension of telephone surveillance targeting officials at OPEKEPE, the now-defunct state body responsible for distributing EU farm subsidies to Greek livestock farmers and agricultural landowners. The wiretapping had been running since July 2021, launched by the Greek Police’s Internal Affairs division — an elite anti-corruption unit informally known as the “Incorruptibles” — following anonymous tip-offs alleging widespread fraud.
“Not Even Minimally Confirmed”
The complaints were stark. Anonymous sources had alleged that legitimate farmers entitled to EU subsidies were being passed over, while individuals falsely registered as livestock breeders were collecting millions of euros annually for land they could not even locate on a map. “You are our only hope for cleaning up a system rotten with criminals who are destroying this entire nation,” the complaint read, according to TA NEA.
Despite more than a year of wiretapping 16 OPEKEPE officials, Greek Police’s Internal Affairs submitted a request in April 2022 for yet another extension of the surveillance, acknowledging that the recordings had not confirmed the alleged wrongdoing but arguing that further monitoring was necessary, as well as the continuation of the investigation.
The judicial council disagreed. In its ruling No. 602/2022, issued on Aug. 14, 2022, the Athens Court of Appeals council rejected the extension, finding that the existing evidence not only failed to establish serious indications of guilt, but that “the allegations have not even minimally been corroborated so far.” The request, it concluded, was inadmissible.
A Tale of Two Investigations
What makes the ruling particularly striking is what happened next, or rather, what had already been sitting in the same case file all along.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), an independent EU body established to investigate crimes affecting the European Union’s financial interests, subsequently examined the identical evidence compiled by Greek authorities and reached sharply different conclusions. Based on that same dossier — focused on the misappropriation of EU funds — the EPPO requested the lifting of parliamentary immunity for 13 members of the ruling New Democracy party in connection with a related case dubbed “OPEKEPE 2,” covering the 2021 period. TA NEA also reports that the investigation is ongoing and is expected to implicate an additional five to seven political figures, again largely from the governing party.
The divergence is explained, at least in part, by a difference in investigative focus. Greek Police officers who participated in the original inquiry told TA NEA that their goal at the time was to uncover bribery involving OPEKEPE officials — and that there was an apparent “indifference” toward evidence of political interference and favoritism by lawmakers. Judicial sources, meanwhile, noted that because the police reports made no explicit reference to the political dimension of the case, the court’s attention was naturally directed toward bribery offenses rather than the conduct of elected officials. The lawmakers’ names reportedly appeared in the final police report, but their political status was not mentioned.
Questions That Demand Answers
Legal experts cited by TA NEA are calling for a thorough reinvestigation, questioning how Greek authorities failed to weigh the full contents of the OPEKEPE file four years ago. “Even now, these references must be thoroughly investigated,” one legal source said, adding that it remains unclear how the political dimension of the case was not factored in at the time.
Source: TA NEA
