Court convicts 14 over fraudulent EU farm subsidies

Fourteen people were convicted by an Athens misdemeanour court on Wednesday for illegally obtaining EU agricultural subsidies. Ten- to 18-month sentences were imposed, all suspended for three years.

The defendants, mostly from Crete, were found guilty of fraud, attempted fraud and complicity involving 2020 subsidies ranging from 5,000 to 40,000 euros.

Prosecutors said they declared farmland in distant regions – often Rodopi, Epirus or Grevena – using leases of 10 to 30 euros a month.

Many plots had appeared in previous years as public grazing land before suddenly being listed as “private” for a single year.

Paraskevi Tycheropoulou, the witness-employee of disgraced farm subsidy agency OPEKEPE, described the scheme, recalling telling applicants, “You can even declare the Acropolis, but you should not have been subsidized!”

EU prosecutor Dionysis Mouzakis called the practices “deeply antisocial,” arguing they deprived real farmers of resources and reflected “an organized system.”