Staff of one state agency in Greece went into a frenzy this month when a registered farmer appeared – at least in electronic records – to have pocketed subsidies reaching a whopping 14 million euros.
The eyebrow-raising amount was reportedly detected by staff of the farm ministry-affiliated Greek Payment Authority of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), known in the country with its wordy acronym of OPEKEPE.
Media reports on Tuesday confirmed that the individual is an actual person, living in the southwest Greece prefecture of Ilia – northwest Peloponnese – who ostensibly received subsidies for organic cultivations.
However, in a later and forceful clarification, OPEKEPE said the 14-million-euro figure was part of “accounting counter-transactions related to the Community’s (EU) participation in the 2023 period with the organization’s tax code, and that the specific farmer did not collect this sum of money.”
When the initial alarm subsided, it was determined that the specific farmer has received no more than…67 euros since 2006.
