The largest trial to date in Crete concerning alleged fraud against the European Union’s farm subsidy system vopened on Monday September 22 in Heraklion.
A total of 105 defendants, men and women from different parts of the Heraklion region, some of them relatives, allegedly worked with consulting firms and accounting offices to present fictitious land leases in order to secure annual EU aid ranging from €10,000 to €15,000 between 2019 and 2023. The applications included details of supposed landlords, along with rental agreements submitted to OPEKEPE, Greece’s Payment and Control Agency for Community Aid Guidance and Guarantee. In reality, investigators claim, the landowners did not possess the plots in question, and the defendants never leased or farmed them. In some cases, individuals were flagged early: their tax numbers were frozen by audit authorities, or they were deemed ineligible through cross-checks, meaning they never received payments.
This case came to light after an earlier investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO. Files were first sent to prosecutors in Athens, then distributed locally, resulting in this large-scale trial in Crete.
The backdrop, of course, is the high-profile investigation by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) into widespread fraud involving Community subsidies doled out by OPEKEPE’s services to bogus “young farmers” and stockbreeders, at least identified as such on paper, for fictitious herds and pasturelands.
