EU Investigates Alleged Fraud in Greek Agricultural Subsidies

Summary

European Union author­i­ties are inves­ti­gat­ing a multi-mil­lion-Euro fraud in Greece, where agri­cul­tural sub­si­dies intended for farm­ers have been diverted to non-farm­ers. The inves­ti­ga­tion includes a raid on the Ministry of Rural Development and Food’s pay­ment agency, Opekepe, and the case has already resulted in charges against seven defen­dants for sub­mit­ting false sub­sidy appli­ca­tions.

An alleged multi-mil­lion-Euro fraud in Greece, in which funds reserved for agri­cul­tural sub­si­dies have been chan­neled to non-farm­ers, is under inves­ti­ga­tion by European Union author­i­ties.

Last month, pros­e­cu­tors from the European Public Prosecutors’ Office (EPPO), accom­pa­nied by offi­cials from the Greek anti-cor­rup­tion unit, raided the Ministry of Rural Development and Food’s pay­ment and con­trol agency for guid­ance and to guar­an­tee com­mu­nity aid’s (Opekepe) head­quar­ters in Athens in the pur­suit of unlaw­ful pay­ments to non-eli­gi­ble indi­vid­u­als.

Opekepe is a Greek pub­lic agency respon­si­ble for dis­trib­ut­ing European sub­si­dies of around €3 bil­lion annu­ally to Greek farm­ers and live­stock breed­ers.

Politico reported that Opekepe’s employ­ees phys­i­cally con­fronted the EPPO offi­cials dur­ing the raid. 

In com­ments to Politico, Laura Kövesi, the European Chief Prosecutor, vowed to press ahead with the probe into the agency despite ​“attacks” and ​“intim­i­da­tion” against the EPPO staff.

EPPO said that in a series of cases between 2019 and 2022, Opekepe made pay­ments to indi­vid­u­als who falsely declared lease or own­er­ship of pas­ture­lands or claimed to be young farm­ers to receive European sub­si­dies.

According to one com­plaint, an indi­vid­ual declared him­self to be the owner of 2,200 hectares of olive groves planted at an alti­tude of 1,800 meters on the moun­tains of west­ern Macedonia, a north­ern Greek region that is highly unlikely to fos­ter olive trees due to the high alti­tude and freez­ing win­ters.

The root of the prob­lem of the farm­ing sub­si­dies mis­man­age­ment can be traced back to 2015.

Around that time, the European Union decided to finan­cially sup­port live­stock breed­ers and farm­ers accord­ing to the size of the pas­tures and grass­lands they used or leased.

However, Greece’s Mediterranean land­scape and the lack of for­est maps that would demar­cate the avail­able pas­ture­land in the coun­try did not align with the offi­cial def­i­n­i­tion of pas­tures intro­duced by the E.U., which best described the pas­tures found in cen­tral and north­ern European mem­ber coun­tries.

With the con­sent of Brussels, the then-Greek gov­ern­ment issued a min­is­te­r­ial deci­sion to pro­vide a ​“tech­ni­cal solu­tion” to the prob­lem. 

The deci­sion allowed farm­ers and breed­ers to declare the use of pas­tures in areas away from their base for graz­ing their ani­mals, thereby com­ple­ment­ing the size of pas­tures they used and becom­ing eli­gi­ble for sub­si­dies.

This tech­ni­cal­ity, how­ever, opened the door to usurpers who falsely declared them­selves own­ers or users of pas­tures and claimed a por­tion of the European funds.

The case of fraud­u­lent sub­si­dies has already been referred to an Athens court, with seven defen­dants charged with sub­mit­ting false appli­ca­tions to Opekepe and unlaw­fully receiv­ing thou­sands of Euros in finan­cial aid.

“This was a method, a scheme, used to access funds with­out meet­ing eli­gi­bil­ity cri­te­ria,” said Paraskevi Tycheropoulou, an ex-Opekepe offi­cial and a key wit­ness in the case. ​“In many cases, the land listed had never belonged to the appli­cants or had been declared by some­one else in the past.”

At least eight more sim­i­lar cases involv­ing the embez­zle­ment of European agri­cul­tural funds are expected to reach court in the next few months.

In light of the mis­use of the farm­ing funds, the Greek gov­ern­ment decided to abol­ish Opekepe and trans­fer its oper­a­tions to the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE).

Some, how­ever, argued that the gov­ern­ment rushed to shut down the orga­ni­za­tion in an attempt to pre­vent the pros­e­cu­tors from dig­ging deep into the scan­dal of funds mis­han­dling.

Sources, request­ing anonymity to dis­cuss an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, told Olive Oil Times that gov­ern­ment offi­cials may have been aware of, or even had a role in, the dis­sem­i­na­tion of European funds to non-ben­e­fi­cia­ries in the past few years.

As a group, the Greek farm­ers expressed their agony over the trans­fer of the agri­cul­tural pay­ments to AADE.

“This trans­fer causes us enor­mous con­cern and fear over the sub­si­dies pay­ments,” farmer and head of the Evros farm­ers’ union Yiannis Margaritides said. ​“The rev­enue agency is an insti­tu­tion that has noth­ing to do with agri­cul­tural sub­si­dies. It will take some time until they are prop­erly coor­di­nated, and we do not know what will hap­pen with the pay­ments.”

Meanwhile, reports of another poten­tial case of mis­han­dling European sub­si­dies have sur­faced in the coun­try, this time con­cern­ing funds allo­cated for the country’s organic bee­keep­ers.

According to a com­plaint filed with the Greek Ministry of Agriculture and Food by Etheas, the national union of agri­cul­tural asso­ci­a­tions, no eval­u­a­tion is con­ducted to iden­tify the gen­uine organic bee­keep­ers before dis­trib­ut­ing the funds, result­ing in the impru­dent allo­ca­tion of the money at the expense of the actual ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

The total amount allo­cated to organic bee­keep­ers in Greece exceeds €18 mil­lion annu­ally.

• Politico
• Ethnos