Greek court has begun hearing a high-profile fraud case involving the misuse of European Union agricultural subsidies through false land lease applications.

Seven people are accused of submitting false applications to OPEKEPE, the agency responsible for managing EU subsidies, and of receiving tens of thousands of euros from the national reserve, a fund intended to support young and new farmers. The national reserve is partly financed by EU mechanisms and through horizontal reductions in payments to legitimate farmers.

“This was a method, a scheme used to access funds without meeting the criteria,” Paraskevi Ticheropoulou, an OPEKEPE employee and key witness for the prosecution, told Kathimerini. “In many cases, the land in question never belonged to the applicants or had been declared by other people in the past,” she explained.

According to Ticheropoulou, an internal audit began in 2019 after anonymous reports raised suspicions of widespread abuse. She checked nearly 300 tax numbers linked to suspicious applications, many of which revealed fake lease agreements for pastures that were not used for grazing or mountain land belonging to deceased persons. “Entire mountains have been declared as pastures for rent by people who do not own a single animal,” she told the court.

The defense denies any wrongdoing and claims the properties were acquired legally. Two of the defendants have reimbursed the funds in full, sparking a debate over whether this step “extinguishes” criminal liability under EU rules. The court rejected initial objections to the legality of the indictment but reserved the right to rule on whether the offense is subject to criminal prosecution.

The trial is the first of at least eight similar cases to reach court as part of a wider subsidy fraud scheme in Greece.

The case is unfolding against a backdrop of increased scrutiny of OPEKEPE. The government has announced that it will dissolve the agency and transfer its responsibilities to the Independent Public Revenue Agency (AADE) after years of corruption scandals and EU investigations.

Earlier this month, on May 19, prosecutors from the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO), accompanied by 20 officers from the Greek police's anti-corruption unit, raided OPEKEPE's headquarters. The authorities have uncovered an extensive scheme involving false claims for pasture land used to illegally obtain EU funds. | BGNES