Greek police say OPEKEPE subsidy fraud network caused more than €17 million in damage
Greece's Operation Harvest says organised groups drained agricultural subsidies from OPEKEPE for years using false land, livestock and seed-related documentation.
Greece's Operation Harvest has exposed a large fraud system built around agricultural subsidies distributed through OPEKEPE. According to Protothema, the damage linked to five identified criminal groups is already estimated at more than 17 million euros, and investigators say the final figure may rise because the wider inquiry is still continuing.
The report says 1,151 defendants are tied to the five cases. More than 90 people have been arrested so far, at least 17 have been remanded in custody, and around 40 people who were initially detained were later released under restrictive conditions. Authorities describe the scheme as organised crime rather than scattered small-scale abuse, with clear hierarchies, defined roles and activity spanning several years.
Investigators say the groups targeted land parcels that carried subsidy rights for crops and grazing land but had not been declared to OPEKEPE by other applicants. In many cases, the land belonged to unsuspecting citizens, deceased persons or the state itself. The parcels were then registered in property declarations belonging to relatives or associates who falsely appeared as owners or lessors, and forged ownership documents were used to submit subsidy applications.
The investigation also found that some perpetrators inflated the size of livestock herds in order to collect larger payments tied to grazing land. In two cases, members of Declaration Reception Centers, which act as intermediaries between producers and OPEKEPE, allegedly helped the groups either by giving them access to mapping data for undeclared land or by giving their applications favourable treatment.
A separate criminal group used two companies that trafficked in fictitious sales documents and forged seed certification labels. Associates then attached those irregular invoices and labels to subsidy applications as supposed proof of activity. That detail is especially significant because it shows the fraud was not limited to land declarations and livestock counts, but also reached documentation linked to seed trade and compliance.
Protothema says the activity dates back at least to 2018 and stretched from Crete and Samos to Kilkis, other parts of northern Greece, Macedonia, Athens, Santorini and Epirus. The article also notes that 70 checks into possible OPEKEPE subsidy irregularities involving both individuals and legal entities have been ordered since 2010. For Greek and EU farm policy, the case points to a structural vulnerability in the subsidy system for the primary sector rather than a handful of isolated abuses.