Mitsotakis’ only way out is to send the Ministers, and those who will follow, before a natural judge. The clear message that must be sent to the Europeans and the cleansing of OPEKEPE.
Watching the parliamentary inquiry, anyone who knows what has happened in recent years at OPEKEPE (Greek Payment and Control Agency for Guidance and Guarantee Community Aid) realizes that the government majority behaves as if it lives in another country.
The word scandal is foreign to them, and their desperate attempt to cling to the words of people who refuse to even utter it — people who will soon be at least indicted, if not already in pretrial detention — shows they have learned nothing and understood nothing.
This was more than evident, especially during Tycheropoulou’s testimony: one only had to observe the comments of the government majority and the “misunderstanding” of Makarios Lazaridis, speaking on behalf of Ms. Manou of OPEKEPE, because Tycheropoulou referred to her as a “simple lawyer” rather than as a director.
These are pitiful spectacles, as the government majority seems to believe it can continue deceiving Greek farmers — even as those same farmers, left unpaid because of the scandal, are now mobilizing in protest.
They’ve “hit the limit”
Because while this scandal may not have originated under the current government but under the “experts” of the previous one, it is now crystal clear to public opinion that under this administration it was consolidated, expanded, and ultimately reached astronomical proportions.
Any honest Ministers, administrators, or OPEKEPE employees who tried to put even a modest stop to it were, at best, sidelined — and at worst, slandered and humiliated by everyone involved, including outright criminals and thieves.
This marks the lowest point of our political system — for which there is one and only one person responsible: the Prime Minister himself, whose handling of the matter is at best bewildering.
Instead of sending the implicated Ministers before a natural judge based on the case file of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), he rewards them with a sham of a parliamentary inquiry.
We are not claiming the Ministers are guilty by default, but they cannot be deemed innocent merely because, as government officials brazenly admit, “they have a parliamentary majority.”
The wrong message
In trying to present these fraudulent schemes as part of long-standing “systemic issues” or isolated incidents, the government has sent the wrong message — and it is paying the price.
The message that fraudsters, especially when they are “our people,” enjoy protection wounds the government daily.
And those “our people” have received that message clearly continuing their dirty work unhindered, even during the parliamentary inquiry.
It’s not only the implicated Ministers who act arrogantly, starting with Mr. Voridis who seems oddly certain that no new evidence against him exists at the European Prosecutor’s Office, but the entire network around them.
The mafia and the serious allegations against the Audit Court
A network that operates with mafia-style rules, silencing and humiliating employees like Tycheropoulou and Kaliouris, is not an isolated case.
Here’s what’s happening:
Anyone who dares to expose fraud is immediately targeted: their work scrutinized for errors or motives, and their reputation dragged through the mud.
No one bothers to check whether their claims are actually true.
And so, they end up turning Zoe Konstantopoulou into a folk hero.
What every fair-minded viewer saw in Tycheropoulou’s testimony was enough to reveal the political indecency of the government MPs in the inquiry.
She testified that “Frapes” (a nickname for a key figure) went so far as to call her at home, that an employee in Crete, Kaliouris, received threats after carrying out an audit; one known only to his Director General, who then leaked it.
Most shockingly, she alleged that members of the Audit Court who attempted to investigate OPEKEPE “disappeared” soon afterward — and the parliamentary majority did not even flinch.
What she revealed about the Audit Court points to decay and collusion within the judiciary, something that cannot be swept under the rug.
In essence, she described how powerful figures within the Court were complicit, and since MPs failed to act, it should have been the Supreme Court intervening. Its inertia only reinforces the impression that “something is rotten in the kingdom of Denmark.”
Lazaridis and the degenerate practices
All this unfolds as, just days ago, Makarios Lazaridis was wagging his finger and demanding that the “complaints about four tax numbers (AFMs)” made by Kourmentza be read aloud — the same Kourmentza whose intercepted conversations with President Babassidis reveal the decadent environment within OPEKEPE. He believed he had uncovered evidence that Simandrakos and Tycheropoulou had made illegal payments.
Lazaridis conveniently forgot that Kourmentza has already been caught red-handed by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and will have plenty to explain in court.
Nor did he show any sensitivity to what Tycheropoulou testified. The same deaf ear was turned by the President of the Inquiry Committee, who was later humiliated on the Open TV channel when he could not justify his indefensible conduct. He also cannot prove that Kourmentza was telling the truth, since she was later ridiculed by opposition MPs for her politically driven and contradictory statements.
They took the Europeans for fools
Everything we see in the inquiry is merely a continuation of the botched handling that has plagued OPEKEPE for years.
From the outset — when it was already known that not only the European Prosecutors but also the European Commission’s DG Agri had detected the criminal network — the government seemed to think it could keep fooling everyone with figures like Reppa and Kaimakamis, the part-time vice president of OPEKEPE.
In other words, they took the Europeans — the so-called “stupid foreigners” — for fools.
They left in place all the executives whose conversations, now in the hands of the European Prosecutor, are said to be just a drop in the ocean of evidence. These same officials continue to manipulate data, possibly even falsifying it,
along with Neuropublic, the private IT contractor that enjoys suspiciously “tender” treatment from the ministry.
These are the people who froze farmers’ tax IDs, authorized illegal payments, and somehow managed to “count Frapes’ sheep correctly in a single day.”
Like magicians, they “counted” 2,500 animals, and if you asked them to tally Crete’s declared livestock, they’d insist it was correct, even if the island (including its six-mile territorial waters) couldn’t physically fit that many sheep.
The intent behind withholding farmers’ payments
And that’s how we got here: the Europeans are demanding audits that can’t be performed, Neuropublic is playing its usual delay game, and farmers remain unpaid.
They deliberately delayed the OSDE (Integrated Administration and Control System - IACS) to make payments without checks, but when they were caught, they changed the narrative, claiming that “more audits are needed.”
Where exactly did OPEKEPE and the Ministry of Agriculture read that?
The truth is, they can pay genuine farmers; they just don’t want to bear the political cost of excluding the fraudsters.
To appease the latter, they might pay with borrowed money, as they do every year; but if OPEKEPE’s accreditation is suspended afterward, the bill will fall on the state budget.
In essence, they refuse to pay now because they’ve decided they can’t — not without risking that suspension.
Hence the constant postponement of payments, now promised for the end of November.
But they don’t realize that if farmers do get paid, they’ll still “plow Constitution Square” with protests.
And we’re not talking about the “Frapes”, we’re talking about real farmers who sweat and bleed in their fields.
Of course, the question now is: what can actually be done, with time running out?
The truth is, not much — except perhaps for Kostis Hatzidakis’ daily pleas and promises to Brussels not to revoke OPEKEPE’s accreditation, or to allow the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE) to act as the new payment agency, even if it’s not yet fully ready.
Even if those pleas work, the issue is far from over — immediate action is still needed.
The solution: The natural judge
On the matter of accountability, it’s clear that this story is far from finished; and from what we hear, the government may soon find itself in far deeper trouble than even its political opponents can foresee.
It could still preempt disaster by closing the inquiry and referring both Mr. Voridis and Mr. Avgenakis to the natural judge.
And the Prime Minister should stop pretending not to understand: the European Prosecutors have already described the offenses relevant to their jurisdiction.
They did so because, under Greece’s constitutional provisions, they could not formally indict here — but that doesn’t make the facts any less real.
And no one can guarantee that the next case file won’t include Kostas Tsiaras or Nikos Salatas — quite the opposite, in fact.
Put them “on ice”, and assign responsibility
The next step should be to suspend all OPEKEPE directors and officials mentioned in the known case file, and bring back those who handled the original complaints but are now being persecuted.
That would give them a chance to prove they are competent, not just whistleblowers or accusers
Furthermore, Neuropublic should be removed from OPEKEPE entirely, and AADE should assume full control of the agency’s IT systems, even if by force, to ensure proper monitoring of payments and OSDE procedures.
Immediate payments with audits and exemplary punishments
Finally, the government must immediately pay farmers their advance subsidies, and then, as IT systems and staffing reforms progress, launch sweeping audits and punish offenders severely and publicly.
Only then will there be a sense that justice is being served.
Negotiation for redistribution of rights
But the story doesn’t end there.
Once the government proves, both to Brussels and to Greek farmers, that it truly wants a cleansing, it must renegotiate the redistribution of agricultural rights.
Right now, fraudsters hold entitlements that will eventually be lost, meaning real farmers will lose money they deserve.
If redistribution does not occur, genuine farmers will remain the losers; and the funds they are entitled to will simply be “saved” by the European budget.
That is the greatest problem, regardless of how many “cleansing” steps are taken.
Nikos Karoutzos
nkaroutzos@gmail.com
www.bankingnews.gr
The word scandal is foreign to them, and their desperate attempt to cling to the words of people who refuse to even utter it — people who will soon be at least indicted, if not already in pretrial detention — shows they have learned nothing and understood nothing.
This was more than evident, especially during Tycheropoulou’s testimony: one only had to observe the comments of the government majority and the “misunderstanding” of Makarios Lazaridis, speaking on behalf of Ms. Manou of OPEKEPE, because Tycheropoulou referred to her as a “simple lawyer” rather than as a director.
These are pitiful spectacles, as the government majority seems to believe it can continue deceiving Greek farmers — even as those same farmers, left unpaid because of the scandal, are now mobilizing in protest.
They’ve “hit the limit”
Because while this scandal may not have originated under the current government but under the “experts” of the previous one, it is now crystal clear to public opinion that under this administration it was consolidated, expanded, and ultimately reached astronomical proportions.
Any honest Ministers, administrators, or OPEKEPE employees who tried to put even a modest stop to it were, at best, sidelined — and at worst, slandered and humiliated by everyone involved, including outright criminals and thieves.
This marks the lowest point of our political system — for which there is one and only one person responsible: the Prime Minister himself, whose handling of the matter is at best bewildering.
Instead of sending the implicated Ministers before a natural judge based on the case file of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), he rewards them with a sham of a parliamentary inquiry.
We are not claiming the Ministers are guilty by default, but they cannot be deemed innocent merely because, as government officials brazenly admit, “they have a parliamentary majority.”
The wrong message
In trying to present these fraudulent schemes as part of long-standing “systemic issues” or isolated incidents, the government has sent the wrong message — and it is paying the price.
The message that fraudsters, especially when they are “our people,” enjoy protection wounds the government daily.
And those “our people” have received that message clearly continuing their dirty work unhindered, even during the parliamentary inquiry.
It’s not only the implicated Ministers who act arrogantly, starting with Mr. Voridis who seems oddly certain that no new evidence against him exists at the European Prosecutor’s Office, but the entire network around them.
The mafia and the serious allegations against the Audit Court
A network that operates with mafia-style rules, silencing and humiliating employees like Tycheropoulou and Kaliouris, is not an isolated case.
Here’s what’s happening:
Anyone who dares to expose fraud is immediately targeted: their work scrutinized for errors or motives, and their reputation dragged through the mud.
No one bothers to check whether their claims are actually true.
And so, they end up turning Zoe Konstantopoulou into a folk hero.
What every fair-minded viewer saw in Tycheropoulou’s testimony was enough to reveal the political indecency of the government MPs in the inquiry.
She testified that “Frapes” (a nickname for a key figure) went so far as to call her at home, that an employee in Crete, Kaliouris, received threats after carrying out an audit; one known only to his Director General, who then leaked it.
Most shockingly, she alleged that members of the Audit Court who attempted to investigate OPEKEPE “disappeared” soon afterward — and the parliamentary majority did not even flinch.
What she revealed about the Audit Court points to decay and collusion within the judiciary, something that cannot be swept under the rug.
In essence, she described how powerful figures within the Court were complicit, and since MPs failed to act, it should have been the Supreme Court intervening. Its inertia only reinforces the impression that “something is rotten in the kingdom of Denmark.”
Lazaridis and the degenerate practices
All this unfolds as, just days ago, Makarios Lazaridis was wagging his finger and demanding that the “complaints about four tax numbers (AFMs)” made by Kourmentza be read aloud — the same Kourmentza whose intercepted conversations with President Babassidis reveal the decadent environment within OPEKEPE. He believed he had uncovered evidence that Simandrakos and Tycheropoulou had made illegal payments.
Lazaridis conveniently forgot that Kourmentza has already been caught red-handed by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and will have plenty to explain in court.
Nor did he show any sensitivity to what Tycheropoulou testified. The same deaf ear was turned by the President of the Inquiry Committee, who was later humiliated on the Open TV channel when he could not justify his indefensible conduct. He also cannot prove that Kourmentza was telling the truth, since she was later ridiculed by opposition MPs for her politically driven and contradictory statements.
They took the Europeans for fools
Everything we see in the inquiry is merely a continuation of the botched handling that has plagued OPEKEPE for years.
From the outset — when it was already known that not only the European Prosecutors but also the European Commission’s DG Agri had detected the criminal network — the government seemed to think it could keep fooling everyone with figures like Reppa and Kaimakamis, the part-time vice president of OPEKEPE.
In other words, they took the Europeans — the so-called “stupid foreigners” — for fools.
They left in place all the executives whose conversations, now in the hands of the European Prosecutor, are said to be just a drop in the ocean of evidence. These same officials continue to manipulate data, possibly even falsifying it,
along with Neuropublic, the private IT contractor that enjoys suspiciously “tender” treatment from the ministry.
These are the people who froze farmers’ tax IDs, authorized illegal payments, and somehow managed to “count Frapes’ sheep correctly in a single day.”
Like magicians, they “counted” 2,500 animals, and if you asked them to tally Crete’s declared livestock, they’d insist it was correct, even if the island (including its six-mile territorial waters) couldn’t physically fit that many sheep.
The intent behind withholding farmers’ payments
And that’s how we got here: the Europeans are demanding audits that can’t be performed, Neuropublic is playing its usual delay game, and farmers remain unpaid.
They deliberately delayed the OSDE (Integrated Administration and Control System - IACS) to make payments without checks, but when they were caught, they changed the narrative, claiming that “more audits are needed.”
Where exactly did OPEKEPE and the Ministry of Agriculture read that?
The truth is, they can pay genuine farmers; they just don’t want to bear the political cost of excluding the fraudsters.
To appease the latter, they might pay with borrowed money, as they do every year; but if OPEKEPE’s accreditation is suspended afterward, the bill will fall on the state budget.
In essence, they refuse to pay now because they’ve decided they can’t — not without risking that suspension.
Hence the constant postponement of payments, now promised for the end of November.
But they don’t realize that if farmers do get paid, they’ll still “plow Constitution Square” with protests.
And we’re not talking about the “Frapes”, we’re talking about real farmers who sweat and bleed in their fields.
Of course, the question now is: what can actually be done, with time running out?
The truth is, not much — except perhaps for Kostis Hatzidakis’ daily pleas and promises to Brussels not to revoke OPEKEPE’s accreditation, or to allow the Independent Authority for Public Revenue (AADE) to act as the new payment agency, even if it’s not yet fully ready.
Even if those pleas work, the issue is far from over — immediate action is still needed.
The solution: The natural judge
On the matter of accountability, it’s clear that this story is far from finished; and from what we hear, the government may soon find itself in far deeper trouble than even its political opponents can foresee.
It could still preempt disaster by closing the inquiry and referring both Mr. Voridis and Mr. Avgenakis to the natural judge.
And the Prime Minister should stop pretending not to understand: the European Prosecutors have already described the offenses relevant to their jurisdiction.
They did so because, under Greece’s constitutional provisions, they could not formally indict here — but that doesn’t make the facts any less real.
And no one can guarantee that the next case file won’t include Kostas Tsiaras or Nikos Salatas — quite the opposite, in fact.
Put them “on ice”, and assign responsibility
The next step should be to suspend all OPEKEPE directors and officials mentioned in the known case file, and bring back those who handled the original complaints but are now being persecuted.
That would give them a chance to prove they are competent, not just whistleblowers or accusers
Furthermore, Neuropublic should be removed from OPEKEPE entirely, and AADE should assume full control of the agency’s IT systems, even if by force, to ensure proper monitoring of payments and OSDE procedures.
Immediate payments with audits and exemplary punishments
Finally, the government must immediately pay farmers their advance subsidies, and then, as IT systems and staffing reforms progress, launch sweeping audits and punish offenders severely and publicly.
Only then will there be a sense that justice is being served.
Negotiation for redistribution of rights
But the story doesn’t end there.
Once the government proves, both to Brussels and to Greek farmers, that it truly wants a cleansing, it must renegotiate the redistribution of agricultural rights.
Right now, fraudsters hold entitlements that will eventually be lost, meaning real farmers will lose money they deserve.
If redistribution does not occur, genuine farmers will remain the losers; and the funds they are entitled to will simply be “saved” by the European budget.
That is the greatest problem, regardless of how many “cleansing” steps are taken.
Nikos Karoutzos
nkaroutzos@gmail.com
www.bankingnews.gr
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