Today, the public prosecutor of Alexandroupolis brought criminal prosecution for serious criminal offenses against the five police officers of the Didymoteicho Border Guard Department, who were arrested yesterday by the Internal Affairs Service, after months of investigation and monitoring, for facilitating the entry of illegal immigrants into the country.

Specifically, criminal proceedings were brought against the five police officers (one non-constable and four chief constables) for the specific offenses of facilitating the entry of citizens of third countries without control, management, formation and membership in a criminal organization, bribery of an employee, abuse of power, transfer from abroad citizens of third countries who do not have the right to enter Greece and breach of official confidentiality.

The charge of directing a criminal organization was brought against one of the police officers who is alleged to be the leader of the group and give directions to the others, after contacting four foreigners included in the case file, who reside in Turkey and informed about the arrival of illegal immigrants at the border .

In particular, the specific warden is alleged by the research data to have had the first contact with one of the slave traders in Turkey and gradually tricked the others as well.

The defendants denied the accusations, but by order of the prosecutor they are detained and referred to the Orestiadas investigator and begin to apologize from the morning of Friday, June 2. At the same time, the Internal Affairs Service’s report is expected from the Hellenic Police Headquarters, in order to initiate disciplinary procedures and make them available.

An interesting fact, according to information from the Headquarters of EL.AS, is that three of the five arrested were assigned in 2018 to EYP, where they served for about a year.

It is noted that the Internal Affairs Service’s investigation began after an anonymous complaint about the suspicious activity of the arrested persons and was followed by other, also anonymous complaints. Officers are not ruling out the possibility that the complainants were police officers who sensed from the behavior of those arrested that something was wrong.

They even worked on their day off

As competent sources reported to APE-MPE, the five defendants, having as border guards their main mission to prevent foreigners from approaching the border and attempting to cross into Greek territory, chose shifts at specific points and times, showing excessive zeal and fully taking over the guarding their area of ​​responsibility, sometimes saying that they did not need cameras or the presence of FRONTEX. In fact, in one case, one of the accused, while off duty and with a fever, went to his duty and did a normal shift at the border point.

According to information, the “corruptible” of the Hellenic Socialist Party, who have been investigating the case since last October, managed, mainly after January, to record conversations between the police and the traffickers and collected the information they needed to proceed with yesterday’s operation and the arrest of the accused. In the recorded phone calls, they are heard conversing with people who speak broken Greek.

There are no recorded conversations about their monetary rewards, however, except for some in which they are heard talking about suitcases and one in which one of them says he can’t justify the money to buy a car.

However, after the discovery of significant sums of money in euros and other currencies, during house searches, as part of the preliminary investigation, there were reports of purchases of estates and expensive agricultural machinery, for this reason a thorough investigation is being carried out into the whereabouts of the five defendants and the their financial transactions, in order to establish whether they are justified or not.