The Three Member Misdemeanors Court of Athens convicted 19 of the 22 defendants on Tuesday in a trial centered on fraudulent subsidy claims filed with OPEKEPE, the now defunct agency that distributed EU agricultural payments. The remaining three defendants were acquitted.
The case involved people from Crete who declared themselves owners or lessors of farmland in remote areas, including in the islands of Andros, Kasos, Kalymnos and Nisyros, and the Western Macedonia regions of Kastoria and Florina. EPPO prosecutor Dionysis Mouzakis had asked the court during closing arguments to convict all 22 defendants, telling the panel the case centered on a pattern of leased land, much of it belonging to other people, used to manufacture eligibility for subsidies under EU agricultural rules.
The court separated the 19 convicted defendants by the role prosecutors said they played in the scheme.
Fourteen were convicted as principal perpetrators, meaning the court found they directly carried out the fraud. Prosecutors said those defendants had received subsidies ranging from 25,000 to 85,000 euros each. The court sentenced them at first instance to prison terms of one to two years, suspended for three years.
The remaining five were convicted as accomplices for assisting the scheme rather than carrying it out directly. One received a one year sentence, suspended, and the other four were fined between 8,500 and 11,000 euros.
The court also recognized a mitigating circumstance for 18 of the 19 convicted defendants, tied to what Greek law describes as no criminal record prior to the offense in question. The three judge panel’s decision was not unanimous.
The recognition came despite Mouzakis’s own position. During closing arguments, the prosecutor had argued that the mitigating circumstance should be rejected.
