“There will be a check everywhere and at all levels in OKAYin order to close as many outstanding issues as possible that have been created by the Simandrakos administration”, the Minister of Rural Development and Food states to APE-MPE Lefteris Avgenakis on the occasion of the resignation of the president of the organization. “A new day begins for OPEKEPE. The distance that had been created and the lack of trust between the people of the primary sector and the Agency is a thing of the past. I have pledged that the necessary checks will be in place so that trust, fairness and transparency are fully restored and mistakes are corrected as far as possible. Our goal is to immediately build an Organization that will function properly, organized, modern and in harmony with the suggestions of the community, with one and only purpose, the service of the farmers! We are determined to bring order, housekeeping and transparency! and to carry out a strict control at all levels in OPEKEPE, while an effort will be made to settle all outstanding issues. In any case, circles of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications point out that all complaints made against the previous administration of Simandrakos will be checked, as no one can play games on the backs of farmers. The goal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications is to restructure and streamline the Organization so that it operates transparently and reliably, in accordance with EU rules, in order to regain the trust of Greek farmers,” the Minister of Rural Development and Food emphasizes in his statement.

According to his sources Ministry of Rural Development, the minister is determined to “put the knife in the bone” and they note that “after the resignation of the president of OPEKEPE Vangelis Simandrakos, the way is opened for the consolidation of the Organization”. They point out that the OPEKEPE case has opened wounds for farmers as there were many wrong payments in both October and December.

According to the same sources, “for another matter, there were reactions to wrong payments to OPEKEPE, which was a result of the poor organization and the lack of transparency in the operation of the Organization, which forced its president Vangelis Simandrakos to send to the Minister of Rural Development and Food Lefteris Avgenakis, his resignation”. A resignation that Mr. Avgenakis had requested since October 27, 2023, when the first major errors in the payment of single aid advances were found, but Mr. Simandrakos refused to submit “fortified” behind the view that he had been appointed by ASEP , as they say.

Also, the sources of the ministry estimate that he “hoped that with the team he had created and the people he had in “key” management positions, they would achieve the… correction of the mistakes that had been identified” and add: “However, this did not happen which confirms the ineffectiveness of the specific team, which, in practice, proved to be inadequate and below the circumstances for the management of an Agency which annually manages around 2.8 to 3 billion euros of European aid. In 2022, after the selection of the new administration through ASEP (Evangelos Simandrakos), problems were observed in aid payments. Many beneficiaries protested. However, in the corrective payments made on October 12, 2023, to 105,000 beneficiaries, for the rest of 2022, problems were also found there, as according to estimates by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, about 9 million less were paid (16 million euros instead of 25 million). euro). And this despite the continuous, systematic, uninterrupted, even pressing, daily contribution and assistance of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, to such an extent, however, that it does not exceed the responsibilities of the administration. In the payments of the basic aid advance made on 27 October, problems were again observed. To such an extent that there was an intense wave of reactions from thousands of farmers and breeders, from all over Greece, who threatened to take legal action against the President of the Organization, whom, together with the management team he had created, they consider solely responsible for the situation which has also been formed for the many mistakes and the lack of transparency in payments. There have been complaints from all over Greece that an incorrect advance payment of the basic aid to the beneficiaries for the year 2023 has been found. The total basic aid for 2023 was 829 million euros compared to 1,068 million euros in 2022. The difference of 239 million euros has been transferred in the redistributive aid (178 million euros), the new linked aid and the sectoral programs, (result of the negotiation of the then leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, in 2021). Of the 829 million euros that was the basic aid, 741 million euros were activated, i.e. 88 million less than planned. Which means that the beneficiary farmers, breeders and businesses in the sector received 88 million euros less than originally planned, without any reasonable explanation. Of the 741 million activated, 70% is payable as an advance payment, i.e. 518 million euros, while in the end only 488.5 million euros were credited to the beneficiaries, creating reasonable doubts about the legality and in the interest of the beneficiaries of the payment of EU aid. And this, without, at the same time, the Organization giving information to the beneficiaries about how the aid has been calculated”.

Based on these data, as the same sources underline, “the Minister of Rural Development and Food Lefteris Avgenakis requested the resignations of all members of the Board of Directors, in order to appoint a temporary new administration which will proceed with the necessary reorganizations, in order to meet the objective of the Organization for timely, correct and transparent payments of agricultural subsidies. At that time, all the members of the administration responded to the request for resignation, except for the President of OPEKEPE, Vangelis Simandrakos, who continued to administer until yesterday, where he submitted his resignation, finding himself the inadequacy of his administration for correct payments to the community aids” .

They note that in the payment of the single one, on December 22, but also in the other regimes, there were mistakes which caused the strong reaction of beneficiaries from all over Greece.

Citing the Organization’s announcement, they state that 685,053,809.62 euros were credited to 572,444 beneficiaries, related to the payment of 30% of the basic aid, the redistributive aid, the young farmers and the equalization compensation, and note:

“On December 28, and while the reactions to errors and the new payments reached the Organization and the Ministry of Anti-Corruption with intensity, from all over Greece, Mr. Simandrakos called a meeting of the Board of Directors of OPEKEPE, in which, however, he did not attend . The specific Board of Directors, which, in the end, met under the vice-president Kyriakos Babasidis, after a proposal by the General Director Mrs. Moraitou, proceeded with radical changes in the management team of the OPEKEPE administration and in the removal of managers who were key collaborators of Mr. Simandrakos, as they too bear responsibility for the troubled administration from summer 2022 onwards. The Board of Directors also decided, following a proposal by the Vice-President Kyriakos Babasidis, to entrust a Chartered Accountant with the control of all those complaints that have been made and related to incorrect payments, omissions and opacity in the way the aid is paid.

“Under the weight of these developments, and while answers are pending from the Simandrakos Administration about what has been done with the control of the distribution of rights for pasture without animals and why for years approximately 16,000 farmers’ tax IDs have been “frozen”, without the control being completed and are sent to the public prosecutor if it is found that there are problems, but also under the weight of many other complaints that constantly reach the Ministry of AAT, Mr. Simandrakos finally submitted, yesterday, December 29, his resignation, which Mr. Avgenakis accepted .

“It is noted that the above 16,000 TINs concern beneficiaries who, in the majority, have insufficiently justified commitments for a number of years, because when it was requested by the then President Simandrakos and the then Directors of Direct Aid and Technical Controls to associate these TINs with control orders, any complaints or investigations by other cooperating agencies, this was never done and the necessary relevant documents were never provided.

“The result of this was to create a paraphilology for a business receiving subsidies with technical conditions, without the bound beneficiaries ever being aware of the control they are under in order to provide the necessary supporting documents, which should be evaluated by OPEKEPE committees (according to with the audit circulars), to draw up the relevant audit reports, to inform the producers in writing of the results and any findings and to register all the findings in the information system, as provided by the Community Regulations”.

Instead, as noted by sources of the Ministry of Anti-Corruption, “Mr. Simandrakos with his exclusively cooperating group of Directors and without informing the rest of the Administration, with his own evaluative criteria and according to his personal judgment, not relying on National and European legislation, producing its own “fair” on its own, it proceeded to selective payments of producers at will. The result of all the above is the selective “justification” of producers and the selective “commitment” of some others. Producers who are proven to be involved with audit complaints and without the audit by the competent committees having been completed and while they are in many different Commitment files and for many years are suddenly found paid!!! Events have arisen that expose the Organization, such as having to attend a Court itself in order as a defense witness to help exonerate the charges of forgery for a producer that the audit services of OPEKEPE since 2017, together with other prosecuting services such as the SDOE, had confirmed the illegal acts of the producer. In order to achieve his goal, he with his own unilateral order forbade the Legal Service of OPEKEPE to attend the Court defending the interests of the Organization. There are many similar cases and it is a given that the new administration will check everything, so that through fair decisions the Organization will regain its credibility and rebuild it on a sound basis. A commitment that, from the government’s programmatic statements, has been undertaken by the Minister of AAT, Lefteris Avgenakis, pointing out that together with the management of water resources and the change in the ELGA regulation, it is a key priority of the new leadership of the Ministry. Speaking on July 7 about the government’s programmatic statements, Mr. Avgenakis had pointed out: “order will be put in place based on the needs of each beneficiary, continuing the integration of OPEKEPE in the digital platform of gov.gr, so that the Greek producer can to be served easily and immediately, to have a complete picture of his transactions, to feel secure about the transactions he performs and above all to have transparency and fairness in the allocations”.