SDOE goes after funding sources of Golden Dawn
As judicial officials investigating criminal activities linked to Golden Dawn prepare to bring new charges against party officials and lawmakers, representatives of the country’s Financial Crimes Squad (SDOE) are seeking to determine what sources of funding were available to the ultra-right party.
Apart from some 500,000 euros in state funding the party has received over the past year (and some 200 million euros from MPs’ salaries that went into the party’s coffers on the orders of leader Nikos Michaloliakos), GD is believed to have benefited from at least another 2 million euros from various sources, a source told Kathimerini. The cost of maintaining some 70 offices as well as financing the party’s “Greeks only” food distribution and blood donation campaigns is estimated at between 2 and 3 million euros, the source said. But determining which individuals or private firms contributed this cash is far from straightforward and an unprecedented task in the country’s post-dictatorship period, according to judicial officials who met with SDOE representatives last Friday.
Meanwhile Kathimerini has learned that the counter-terrorism agency and the National Intelligence Service (EYP) used some of the most sophisticated wiretaps available to listen in on conversations between members of Golden Dawn. Sources said the eavesdropping intensified after the murder of rapper Pavlos Fyssas by a GD supporter on September 17 with the phones of more than 300 GD officials tapped by the secret services.
