Monastery assets frozen for probe
As an investigation into the acquisition of public land by the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos gets under way, a court yesterday froze the bank accounts of the monastery and its chief monk Ephraim. Meanwhile, the monastery declared that it would transfer any money it had acquired from property sales to the state. But a spokesperson for the Vatopedi community refuted fresh allegations, according to which the monastery’s land claims are illegitimate. He was reacting to assertions made by Bishop Panteleimon of Xanthi during an interview with Sunday’s Kathimerini, according to which the Vatopedi Monastery’s claims to land around Lake Vistonida are «groundless.» In his interview with Kathimerini, Bishop Panteleimon claims that the land in question belongs to refugees who settled in Thrace 80 years ago. A statement issued by the monastery dismissed the claims regarding the tracts around Vistonida as «excesses and falsities,» stressing the legitimacy of the monastery’s ownership of the land and of the exchange of these tracts for land belonging to the Greek state. The monastery said the procedures followed were «absolutely legal and approved several times by state councils.» «The aim of these activities was not the acquisition of any personal gain – for, as monks, we do not own personal property – but the consolidation and continuation of the historic work the monastery has been doing for over a thousand years,» the statement added. The exchange of the Vistonida land for sought-after pieces of real estate in northern Greece is one of several exchanges believed to have taken place between the state and the Vatopedi Monastery.
