38 producers from the area of the municipality of Agrinio and specifically from the area of the Municipal Unit of Stratos, accused of illegal subsidies received from OPEKEPE, as well as forgery, sat in the dock of the Single Municipal Court of Agrinio.
It is worth noting that this is a case that has been occupying the Greek Justice long before the European Public Prosecutor's Office headed by Laura Covesi started its investigation, that is, long before the so-called «OPEKEPE scandal», which has recently occupied the Greek society, as the dispute was the declarations of the producers in question to OPEKEPE for 2018 and 2019.
This is the case of about 15,000 acres in Kythera -which were declared to OPEKEPE as pastures- and for which these producers (several of them from Lepenou) had shown lease contracts, according to which they leased these areas from the Holy Monastery of Pammegiston Taxiarches in Aegialeia. However, a cross-check by OPEKEPE subsequently proved that these lease contracts were forged, as the monastery in question does not own any real estate in Kythera! In fact, the Holy Metropolis of Kalavryta and Aigialia had made it known that after the financial audit conducted by a chartered accountant, it was found that the Monastery never owned any real estate in Kythera, in order to lease it.
At this point it should be clarified that based on the technical solution applied by the Ministry of Rural Development and Food and OPEKEPE, this (the declaration of pasture in another area), however absurd it may seem, was not illegal. In this particular case, however, the illegality, according to the case file that was formed, seems to start with the forgery of the lease contracts, which is even more obvious since it turned out that the Holy Monastery of the Pammegiston Taxiarches in Aegialeia does not even own any real estate in Kythera.
According to reports, the Court found all but one of the accused not guilty of the act of preparing false documents and also found them guilty of using a forged document. In short, the Court held that the producers knew that the lease contracts were forged, but used them in their declarations for subsidies through the OPEKEPE.
All guilty of fraud
As regards the offence of fraud against the financial interests of the European Union, all the accused were found guilty. However, the Court accepted the independent claim of the counsel for the majority of the defendants, Christos Tsiboukis, and in this respect they were tried on the basis of the now defunct law for the protection of the financial interests of the European Union, which distinguishes between basic and «privileged» fraud, i.e. the milder form of fraud for amounts not exceeding EUR 6,000.
In fact, some of the accused producers were found guilty not of fraud, but of attempted fraud, as according to information, in 2019 they did not receive money from OPEKEPE, as their VAT numbers were already blocked from previous OPEKEPE checks concerning livestock.
Prosecutor's proposal for fines
It is worth noting that the Prosecutor's proposal was to impose fines of 3,000 to 5,000 euros on producers in favor of the Greek State and not in favor of OPEKEPE in the form of a refund of money illegally received as subsidies.
The Court, however, did not accept this proposal and even recognized the mitigating circumstance of the defendants' prior lawful life, resulting in the imposition of individual prison sentences ranging from 17 to 28 months with suspension.
The case will, of course, be heard in the second instance by the Court of Justice after the appeal of the accused producers. And it will continue to occupy the judiciary as a separate case file has been formed for the producers' complaint against one of their co-defendants, who they claim provided them with the disputed - false as it turned out - lease contracts for the pastures in Kythera.
Dimitris Papadakis - Newspaper «Syndisi»
