By Elena Galari

The trial of the former president of OPEKEPE began, after a postponement, at the Three-member Misdemeanor Court of Athens Dimitris Mela and the former director of Direct Aid and Technical Projects, Athanasia Reppawho are accused of document embezzlement, dereliction of duty and abetting a criminal.

Both are accused, because they had not been forwarded to justice, the findings from application checks for pastures the period 2019-2020which had been carried out by the head of the Internal Audit Department of OPEKEPE at the time, Friday Tycheropoulouwhich had identified serious irregularities.

As Mrs Tycheropoulou said in her testimony:

“I was responsible for the control of unduly paid amounts. The then president Grigoris Varras assigned me additional checks for the National Reserve 2019–2020, as there were suspicions of abusive statements in pastures. Annually, approximately 650,000 subsidy applications are submitted by farmers, of which approximately 550,000 are approved, with a total aid amount reaching three billion euros. I started checking TINs on September 4, 2020. I found that for 99 TINs there were serious irregularities. The lands declared were not owned by those receiving the subsidy. Someone declared them one year, another the next. It was purely an artificial creation of rights,” said the witness, adding:

“I delivered the report to Ms. Adamopoulou to her deliver to Mr. Varras. He had ordered the findings to be sent to Justice. However, in November 2020, Mr. Varras stepped down from the management of the organization. A few days later, I received an email from the general manager, Mr. Lambropoulos, to deliver the audit files to Mr. Melas and Ms. Reppa. I gathered the facts and the I delivered on November 17th at office of Mr. Melas. Mrs. Reppa was also arriving at that moment.

I submitted these documents, I thought because they were recorded they would have their way. After that I never dealt with this file again. I was hearing from other auditors that my audits were all given for recheck. Some auditors had confirmed them, others had not.

From that moment of mine the right to enter data into the electronic system was removed. I saw that the forms I had entered began to multiply and appeared with different results than the ones I had come up with.”

Chairman: What do you mean when you say they multiplied?

Witness: I had registered a check form and suddenly I was seeing eight with my name and different conclusions. The negative forms were preceded by a code of –1, which I later learned was not taken into account. And all checks were given to me for “recheck”.

The witness testified that he was never pressured or threatened by the two defendants, saying however that he was officially disqualified.

The testimony of the witness continues.