[Panagiotis Pragiannis/InTime News]
European Chief Prosecutor Laura Kοvesi urged Greek authorities Thursday to renew the mandate of members of her team in Athens handling a massive European Union farm subsidy fraud case, and defended their request to lift lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution on the case.
Kovesi also backed Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ appeal for the investigation to proceed as fast as possible – while pointing out the paucity of resources at its disposal – and voiced satisfaction with the government’s pledge to provide extra staff to assist the probe by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Kovesi, whose seven-year term ends this year, said any disagreements on whether to renew the prosecutors’ mandate could be settled at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. But she argued that nobody should have an interest in not keeping on the prosecutors handling the subsidy fraud case – named after the former OPEKEPE state agency that handled farm subsidies – and the fatal 2023 Tempe train crash that killed 57 people.
“It’s important to say that these two colleagues who worked for EPPO did an outstanding job,” she added, speaking at the annual Delphi Economic Forum. “What is the reason to not renew their mandate? … Who has an interest to take out these prosecutors from the cases, from the EPPO while they did an outstanding job?”
Kovesi also strongly rejected criticism from some Greek politicians over the EPPO’s decision to request the lifting of governing New Democracy lawmakers’ immunity from prosecution in three installments, instead of doing it all in one go.
“The main topic here it’s about what really happened in OPEKEPE,” she said, describing the now-defunct agency as “an acronym for corruption, nepotism and clientelism.”
Asked to comment on some ND lawmakers’ arguments that they are being investigated for simply forwarding the concerns of their constituents, Kovesi was uncompromising.
“Corruption, abuse of power, fraud, trading of influence … are defined as a crime in the Greek law,” she said. “Okay? So no one in the world will convince me that these categories are part of [the] job description of politicians here in Greece or somewhere in the EU.”
Nevertheless, asked whether asked whether she felt the EPPO was being antagonized by Greece’s government, authorities or politicians, Kovesi replied: “I don’t think so.”
And she agreed with Mitsotakis’ call for a fast-tracking of the probe involving politicians.
“He’s right,” she said. “We have to finish this investigation very fast because there is a high expectation for the public to clarify what happened. But everyone has to understand that we are humans.”
“Up to now, in this investigation, we have only one police officer who worked with our two prosecutors, three people, who [have] to assess thousands of documents. They have to listen to hundreds of wiretappings. It’s not easy,” she said.
But Kovesi hailed her “very good” meetings Wednesday with government officials who she said agreed to provide the EPPO with more staff for the investigation.
She added that no country could be defined as free of corruption and it was encouraging that cases are being investigated rather than being swept under the carpet.
“This year we have double the new cases registered in Greece because a lot of citizens sent complaints to us,” she said. “This is a good sign. They trust in what we are doing.”