Inspection reveals serious oversights at Athens registry office
A team of public administration inspectors on Tuesday called for an internal inquiry and a judicial probe into the City of Athens department in charge of birth registrations after finding evidence of serious oversights in protocol.
The team examined 545 cases where births were registered up to year after the fact and found that the overwhelming majority were accepted by employees at the office without any corroboration of the statements given by the parents and their witnesses.
It also discovered that most of the claims were submitted by people who are not registered at the Municipality of Athens but belong to other local jurisdictions in Attica. They also found a significant number of cases in which two or more births were registered at the same time.
The inspection was carried out as part of ongoing investigations into claims that registry offices around Greece often disregard protocol and issue birth certificates without confirming the information submitted by applicants, making the system vulnerable to illegal adoption and child-snatching rackets.
The team’s findings will be forwarded to a disciplinary council of the City of Athens, to a public prosecutor and to the Greek Police for further investigation.
