MeRA25 has accused the Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis of hastily shutting down the Greek agency OPEKEPE in a bid to cover up his government’s role in the agricultural subsidy scandal.

Full statement from MeRA25:

“It was back in 2020 when farmers in Naxos tried to register their land with OPEKEPE’s Integrated Administration and Control System (OSDE), only to discover – astonished – that the plots had already been claimed by others.

That same year, Dimitris Moschos, head of the Agricultural Cooperative of Kastoria, uncovered bizarre anomalies following complaints from fellow farmers: 22,000 hectares of olive groves and 17,000 hectares of almond orchards mysteriously appeared in the system. He said at the time: ‘Olives don’t even grow here, yet we found 22,000 hectares of them – on the slopes of Mount Vitsi at 1,850 metres altitude! The whole forest was supposedly olive trees. As for almonds, our region only produces around 1,700 hectares, but OPEKEPE’s system showed 19,000.’

The feast of fraud went on under every agriculture minister – Voridis, Livanos, Georgantas, Tsakiris, Avgenakis. But in 2024, after internal audits and reports from Greek and European oversight bodies, serious irregularities were finally revealed in the way subsidies were being paid to thousands of farmers and livestock breeders.

The unravelling began when Paraskevi Tycheroopoulou, head of OPEKEPE’s Internal Audit Unit, flagged severe misconduct. Instead of launching an inquiry, she was pushed aside, locked out of her office, and cut off from the agency’s databases.

Now, the government is rushing to dissolve the agency altogether – clearly to erase all traces of wrongdoing – while government-aligned media blame ‘clever tricksters who misled OPEKEPE’. But these so-called tricksters were their own people, acting with their blessing and likely on their orders.

Once again, the government has shown that it cares little for farmers and livestock breeders. What matters to them is protecting their inner circle and using public funds to secure votes.

MeRA25 stands firmly with Greece’s farmers and livestock producers, who struggle to remain in production amid hostile financial conditions. On one side, subsidies are channelled only to the well-connected. On the other, if private banks do provide credit, it comes with a noose around the borrower’s neck.

We call for the immediate re-establishment of a public Agricultural Bank to provide fair, targeted liquidity to small and medium-sized farmers and breeders. Real state support is essential if these people are to survive and continue producing. Anything less will shrink our primary sector and deepen our dependence on imports.

Greece must secure food sovereignty in agriculture and livestock. If the government truly wants to help the rural sector, it must implement a just and focused agricultural policy – not turn favoured farmers and breeders into accomplices in fraud.”

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