Property swap values wrong
State evaluators failed to accurately value the property that was awarded to the Vatopedi Monastery as part of the exchange that is under investigation, according to a report by financial experts. The survey was submitted yesterday to the parliamentary investigative committee by the public sector’s General Inspector Leandros Rakintzis. It suggests there were some huge discrepancies in the valuations given by the state officials and the market prices of several properties. The experts who looked at the 31 contracts drawn up between the state and the monastery have found that the values of land and buildings were incorrect in 16 of them. It appears that public property was undervalued by up to 50 percent by state officials, while land belonging to the monastery was overvalued by up to 300 percent. Rakintzis’s report also suggests that tax offices failed to establish the correct value of property involved in the swap.
