EU Prosecutors Accuse Greek Livestock Breeders of Farming Fund Fraud
Source: Balkan Insight
In its latest investigation into EU funding fraud in Greece, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, EPPO on Wednesday accused 100 livestock breeders, mainly from the island of Crete, of fraud involving EU agricultural funds.
EPPO “has filed indictments in the Court of First Instance in Athens against a total of 100 suspects of fraud involving agricultural funds, for an overall damage of 2.9 million euros to the EU budget,” a press release said.
EPPO said the stockbreeders submitted false declarations of ownership of land or falsified leases of land which they did not own or had not leased, to OPEKEPE, the Organisation for Payments and Control of Community Aid Guidance and Guarantees.
This body is responsible for managing funds from the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund, EAGF, and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, EAFRD.
Besides this, the majority of the livestock breeders also declared that they lived in different parts of the country from the ones where they actually live.
In the past few months, EPPO has filed three indictments following “investigations into schemes to defraud the EU of subsidies for the use of pastureland”.
It named 64 suspects on February 18, who are due for trial on May 16. It also indicted 22 people in January, who are due for trial on March 24; 14 others were charged in 2024 in a case due to be heard on May 30.
The estimated cost to to the EU budget caused by the suspects was more than 2.9 million euros. They face up to five years’ imprisonment and a fine if found guilty.
In the latest annual report, published on March 3, EPPO said that at the end of 2024 it was conducting a total of 2,666 active investigations – an increase of 38 per cent since the previous year – with an estimated cost to the EU budget of €24.8 billion – 22.5 per cent more than in 2023.
In Greece alone, 46 investigations were opened in 2024, with an estimated cost of 1.3 billion euros. Currently, there are 84 open investigations with an estimated cost of 1.71 billion euros; of these, 15 concern VAT fraud, with an estimated cost of 489 million euros, while 28 have a cross-border dimension.
EPPO’s fraud investigations in Greece include 25 agricultural and rural development programmes.
Other investigations include regional and urban development programmes, education and culture-related programmes, research and innovation programmes, recovery and resilience programmes, asylum, migration and integration programmes, and one security and defence programme.
The original article: belongs to Balkan Insight .
