Μake us preferred on Google A prosecutor for the European Public Prosecutor’s Office asked an Athens court on Tuesday to convict 22 defendants, most of them farmers from Crete, in a case centered on fraudulent subsidy claims filed with OPEKEPE, the now defunct agency that distributed European Union agricultural payments.
Dionysis Mouzakis, the EPPO prosecutor assigned to the case, used his closing arguments before the Three Member Misdemeanors Court of Athens to lay out a pattern of conduct he says connects the 22 defendants. The case went to trial after an anonymous complaint prompted EPPO to open an investigation.
According to the case file, the defendants leased farmland not only in Crete but also on the islands of Kalymnos, Nisyros and Andros, and in the wester Macedonia regions of Florina and Kastoria. An OPEKEPE review found that most of the leased plots actually belonged to owners other than the people listed as holding them, and that the leases were signed for token sums.
Mouzakis walked the court through the legal framework governing OPEKEPE grants, including how farmers submitted applications electronically and the conditions they had to meet to receive a payout. He described the conduct at issue as a circumvention of those rules.
Mouzakis also flagged what he called a limitation in how the case was built, drawing a distinction between the full scope of the alleged wrongdoing and what actually reached the court.
“The present case file was formed after an anonymous complaint reached the European Prosecutor’s Office, and the process was set in motion from there,” Mouzakis added. “The financial police’s check was limited only to the plots that OPEKEPE itself had already rejected as part of its administrative review. I mention this because the picture presented by the case file may be more favorable for some.”
Mouzakis then outlined what he described as a recurring set of features shared by most of the cases, including plots that also turned up on defendants’ E9 filings, the form Greek property owners submit to the tax authority to declare real estate holdings.
“Even though each case is individual, most of them share common elements,” he concluded. “Producers appearing for the first time, or land declared outside Crete, are usually also listed on the E9, and the rents are very low. The applications were also submitted through three declaration submission centers in Crete. The role of those centers is still under investigation.”
The trial will continue with closing arguments from defense lawyers representing the accused. The court is expected to issue its verdict once those arguments conclude.
