Thessaloniki: New postponement in the case with the “45 arias”

The case with the so-called “45 arias” projects, for which the former prefect of Thessaloniki Panagiotis Psomiadis and his brother Dionysis are accused, as a former deputy mayor, has been postponed for the fifth time by the Three-Member Criminal Court of Thessaloniki. Six other people were referred to the same court for trial.

After four adjournments (twice due to the pandemic, and once due to the request of the accused and schedule), the case was scheduled to be tried today, with the Psomiadis brothers present. The Court, however, accepted a lawyer’s request for a new postponement, due to a disability he cited (health problem). Under these circumstances, a new court was appointed, for the middle of January 2023.

The case with the “45 arias” revolves around projects with a budget of hundreds of thousands of euros that seem to have been divided into many smaller ones, worth up to 45 thousand euros, in order to be given through direct assignments and draft tenders to specific contractors, as mentioned in the indictment. The case file includes 456 such projects, during the period 2005-2010, during the tenure of Panagiotis Psomiadis in the prefecture, with the damage to the Greek State exceeding 4 million Euros.

A second part of the same case has to do with project contracts signed in the period 2007-’09 in the Prefecture of Thessaloniki with employees who seem to have been employed in other services than those for which they were hired. The damage in this case for the State seems to be valued at over 1 million Euros.