Benefit fraud suspects remanded
Seven suspected members of a fraud ring believed to have cost the Social Security Foundation (IKA) more than 20 million euros were remanded in custody on Wednesday after a magistrate and prosecutor agreed that this was the correct course of action.
According to sources, one of the suspects admitted to her role in the ring, which was based at the IKA offices in Kallithea and chiefly involved employees based there. She is said to have proposed the auctioning of a certain asset of hers in a bid to make up up for some of the losses caused.
Earlier on Wednesday, in comments to Parliament, Labor and Social Security Minister Giorgos Koutroumanis indicated that such cases of social security fraud would not recur. «The party at the social security funds is over,» he said. Koutroumanis said that the tracing of the fraud ring was the result of months of systematic work, noting that it the fraud was not limited to the IKA in Kallithea.
