Police from the Organized Crime Unit have arrested another gang based in Crete that was defrauding OPEKEPE subsidies. The gang’s alleged leader is agricultural union leader and New Democracy party official Myronas Chiletzakis, while high up in the hierarchy of this complex network are accountant George Lamprakis and his lawyer wife Chrysanthi Koutantou, who were married by PASOK president Nikos Androulakis. For months, police in cooperation with state financial services and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office investigated the tax numbers of 42 people in total, all Crete residents, who had been illegally receiving subsidies since 2019 by claiming land that didn’t belong to them, obtaining approximately €1,700,000.
The arrested individuals may be transferred this morning to the Heraklion prosecutor’s office (only the case file may be sent) and Saturday evening their transport by ferry from Heraklion to Piraeus has been scheduled. In the coming hours they will be brought before the competent authorities since, as is known, the case is being handled by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
OPEKEPE: The gang’s deception formula
The scheme was well-organized and the gang had a central core of 15 people, who are accused of managing to make “big money”. Under the well-known agricultural union leader was an accountant and his lawyer wife. They were the people, according to the case file, who handled the bureaucratic procedures. With the help of other accountants and farmers, they found land that hadn’t been declared to OPEKEPE. They then used their own farmers, who were presumably paid money so that the unexploited land would be declared under their tax numbers and the ring would thus profit from the money. The first subsidy payments, according to data in police hands, began in 2019 and continued until recently.
In raids conducted at homes, offices, warehouses and plots of land, police proceeded to confiscate documents, computers, mobile phones and other evidence that may be related to the gang’s activities as well as cash amounts. In Archanes, Heraklion, police arrested 15 of the 42 suspects in the early hours of Thursday. First arrested were the well-known union leader and president of Small Cooperatives of the National Union of Agricultural Cooperatives, the gang’s lawyer and her accountant husband, who is simultaneously president of the Union of Agricultural Cooperatives of Heraklion. The raids for the remaining 12 arrested individuals occurred almost simultaneously. Among them are relatives of the agricultural union leader, farmers and private individuals.
The strict controls that were conducted
Analysis of data from the tables of suspicious tax numbers that police had received when the illegal subsidies scandal broke led to strict controls and cross-referencing of data on owners of agricultural and cultivated land, as well as those who submitted applications to receive subsidies. As happened with previous gangs that defrauded OPEKEPE, this particular criminal organization also declared even forested areas so that perpetrators could show many acres and consequently receive even higher subsidies. According to journalistic sources, all arrested individuals denied committing fraud before police, claiming that the subsidies they received were completely legal.
The lawyer for five of the accused, George Kokosalis, in statements yesterday from Heraklion Police Headquarters emphasized that “we are at an early and embryonic stage. The accused will be transferred to Athens to the European prosecutor, it’s not the jurisdiction here of the Heraklion Misdemeanor Prosecutor’s Office and the Heraklion Court of Appeals. It appears there is a common denominator in the arrest of all these people.” The case file had not been completed by late yesterday evening by the police handling the case.
Published in Apogeumatini
