Started the lawsuits for the illegal subsidies given by the OPECEPE.
Today (29.05.2025) in the dock of the Athens Court of Appeal, seven defendants were seated for a misdemeanor fraud for subsidies receiving OPEKEPE, without being entitled to up to 90,000 euros in 2019-2020.
In her testimony to the court, the witness, Paraskevi Thanropoulou, an employee who first assumed the sampling of applications in the years 2019-2020 following related complaints, explained that the patent was taking place.
“I am an OPECEPE employee and appointed a 2019-2020 years of audit committee. We checked some VAT, there were some complaints. I do not know if there were both branded and anonymous complaints. From what they had seen in the light of publicity … “the witness described and explained that” they described a method of receiving aid that was not legal. Mr Varas took a sample of control and requested that some VAT ID have been checked for about two months. It was also those who had applied to receive aid, rights from national reserve. It is a piggy bank that there is a European committee there is money there. “
The witness then told the court, the findings he identified during this check. “I had checked 99 VAT IDs appeared as owners who put E9 on the land at one year to get the stock either as owners or as employees, if you went a year behind, you saw that they didn’t belong to anyone else or they were public. We asked for information from AADE. It seemed to us very clearly. If you were entering one year you could see who was one and the other. In general, this was the problem, ”the witness said.
Ms Thanropoulou also explained that “a person who appeared as a land owner, was inspected by his E9 and had never stated her. It was later found to have died in 2016 and its land was never appeared in E9, but it seemed to hire them in 2015 … “
Chairman: During your check, what were the indications you considered suspicious?
Witness: All the VAT IDs had the same characteristics. They had a patent to apply for rights. For example, the low rent. Normal rents are calculated on the basis of objective values and other elements and are thousands of euros. Also the big areas … I was impressed, when I saw on the ground, they are really entire mountains.
He also referred to the traditional pastures for which they were defended and received a subsidy as young or newcomers. “These areas could only be used for grazing. These pastures should not be declared by people who did not have animals to get rights from national reserve. It was not possible to crop them, they were purely pastored. So they should be declared as a productive pasture that required animals. “
The witness said that for the year 2020 the control forms that passed to the system for these VAT ID saw that there was a signal not to be taken into account.
“I learned that these VAT IDs were kept in an excel for some reason. They did not have the corresponding course they could have within the system. Lately I discovered that there was a objection of the controlled to change these results. In the meantime, OPEKEPE of Thessaly has checked the same VAT … There was a process that these were always in the payment system had not been finally out, and in other cases since there was a control form they would have been removed, no rights would have been paid and would not have been paid. “
And he explained: “While the control forms appeared by my name first, when you were looking for other codes and not names of an employee from the Crete or Thessaly PD who overthrew my publications.”
Earlier, the court rejected the defendants’ objections to the limitation and invalidity of the climate of adopting while reserved whether the fact that some of the defendants have returned the money eliminates the criminal.