MPs to discuss OPEKEPE inquiry report
Lawmakers will debate a report compiled by a parliamentary inquiry committee into the scandal-ridden farm payment agency OPEKEPE in a special plenary session on Tuesday.
After five months of work, the panel – to which ruling New Democracy held the majority – approved the party’s final report, which argues that, based on the evidence, no criminal liability emerged for its former agricultural ministers Makis Voridis and Lefteris Avgenakis, describing problems at OPEKEPE as chronic and cross-party in nature.
In their own reports, opposition parties PASOK, SYRIZA and New Left countered that evidence indicated the two former ministers bore serious responsibility for complicity in breach of trust against EU financial interests, with damages exceeding €120,000, and demanded formation of a special prosecutorial committee.
Political parties have traded accusations about which partisan machinery enabled OPEKEPE’s long-standing scandals.
The snowballing scandal emerged last year when European prosecutors said that hundreds of individuals submitted fraudulent claims to receive EU funds for farmland they didn’t own or work, depriving legitimate farmers of the funds they deserved. Since then, several cases have been opened against individuals by Greek anti-money laundering authorities charging suspects with a slew of offenses, including forming and joining a criminal organization, fraud against the European Union, complicity, and false declarations.
Under pressure by the European Commission, the government submitted a plan to overhaul OPEKEPE, which includes integrating the agency’s functions into the country’s tax authority, creating a new information system for faster payments. It also imposed a 392.2 million-euro fine on Greece last June, and decided to reduce the subsidies Greece will receive in the next years by 5%, reflecting the view that there has been no proper supervision and operation of the subsidy management model for years.
