Far from being "caught napping" by the European Public Prosecutor's case regarding the Greek aid payments agency OPEKEPE, the government had initiated investigations into 5,200 individuals and legal entities for illegal subsidies long beforehand, above and beyond those cases included in the European public prosecutor's investigation, government spokesperson Pavlos Marinakis said in an interview with the television ANT1 on Thursday.
"It is obvious that a prime minister has given orders for a cleansing when his ministers have referred Statement Reception Centres, OPEKEPE administrations and subsidy rings to justice," he stressed.
Marinakis said a brief search of the records with his aides had shown that "there was clearly knowledge of this long-standing systemic dysfunction, which was our responsibility, however, to deal with and the prime minister desired zero tolerance. There are 5,200 individuals and some legal entities under investigation by the services and many of them by justice, between 2019 and the present day, for cases involving illegal subsidies."
According to Marinakis, these included past cases but also several cases reported under the term of the present government, listing a number of these as examples.
"Why am I saying all this? Because it shows there is a government that is seeking to tackle a phenomenon that goes back at least 30 years. To remind the citizens that from 1996 until the present, Greece has been called to pay 2.7 billion euros in fines. Apart from the 415 million euros, where we will discuss what we are going to do and there are developments for seeking the money," he added.
The government's failure lay in the fact that, in spite of its efforts, even more work was needed to eliminate the 'rot', he said, while stressing that the prime minister was monitoring the process for dealing with these chronic problems.
In relation to the letterS sent by a former OPEKEPE chief Evangelos Simandrakos regarding suspect taxpayer registration numbers (AFM), Marinakis pointed out that the government had accepted his recommendations to block payments to these, while another 730 that received payments were referred to justice after Simandrakos' resignation.
"How can the opposition be building a narrative of a cover-up or collusion for a government that sends the people it is supposedly doing favours for to justice, to the public prosecutor and possibly to harsh penalties," he asked, noting that the opposition narrative did not make sense.