- He is on trial alongside a former senior executive of the agency for document embezzlement and repeated breach of duty.
- The case file containing the 2019–2020 audits conducted by Paraskevi Tycheropoulou, the then-head of OPEKEPE’s Internal Audit Directorate, never made it to the judicial authorities.
- When the European Public Prosecutor’s Office requested the file, Dimitris Melas claimed that he did not have it and had destroyed it.
- He allegedly protected individuals who posed as farmers and collected subsidies despite not owning any livestock.
- The land they claimed as private property in order to receive subsidies was public land.
by Vangelis Triantis
The Three-Member Misdemeanor Court of Athens has referred a former OPEKEPE president and a former senior agency executive to trial. Dimitris Melas, who was OPEKEPE’s president from March 2021 to July 2022 and is a New Democracy political figure, and Athanasia Reppa, who headed the Direct Payments and Market Support Directorate and the Technical Works Directorate for many years, are involved in the case. They face charges of jointly embezzling official documents, repeatedly harboring a criminal, and repeatedly breaching their duty—offenses classified as misdemeanors.
The case centers on a series of audits of grazing land subsidy applications from the 2019–2020 National Reserve. Paraskevi Tycheropoulou conducted the audits while she was head of OPEKEPE’s Internal Audit Directorate. Despite her explicit request in the report that the findings be forwarded to the judiciary, Dimitris Melas never did so. This stance contrasts sharply with that of the previous OPEKEPE administration under Professor Grigoris Varras, which forwarded at least three audit reports to the judicial authorities. Notably, criminal charges have already been filed by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in some of the cases mentioned in Tycheropoulou’s report that were brought to Melas’s attention.
The report
In November 2020, Paraskevi Tycheropoulou submitted a substantial report to Dimitris Melas, who was the Vice President of OPEKEPE at the time. The report contained the results of audits regarding grazing lands, the distribution of the 2019–2020 National Reserve, and the recovery of overpaid funds. The report was forwarded to OPEKEPE’s Directorate of Technical Inspections and copied to OPEKEPE’s president, Fanis Papas, and senior management.
Σκάνδαλο ΟΠΕΚΕΠΕ: Τα έγγραφα που «καίνε» Μάκη Βορίδη και Νομική Υπηρεσία
Who is Dimitris Melas?
At the time, he was serving as vice president of OPEKEPE. A graduate of the School of Veterinary Medicine at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Mr. Melas has close ties to the New Democracy party. According to his official biography, he served as caretaker Minister of Rural Development and Food under the Loukas Papadimos government and as General Secretary for Agricultural Policy and Management of EU Funds under the Antonis Samaras administration.
He was appointed Director General of Education and Training at the DIMITRA Agricultural Organization in 2007, becoming President of OPEKEPE the following year. From 2009 to 2012, he was the head of the agricultural affairs unit at the permanent representation of Greece to the EU and Greece’s representative on the EU’s special committee on agriculture.
In 2016, New Democracy president Kyriakos Mitsotakis appointed him coordinator of the party’s agri-food policy program. In 2019, he ran as a New Democracy candidate for the European Parliament. In March 2021, he was appointed president of OPEKEPE, a position he held until resigning in July 2022.
“Irregularities” and Fraud
The audits revealed significant findings and evidence suggesting that some OPEKEPE subsidy applicants may have engaged in irregular practices. For example, some producers were found to possess agricultural plots obtained through “unlawful means” in 2020. Additionally, some appeared to have rented grazing land that far exceeded the average number of acres typically leased by livestock farmers and agricultural producers. Although they were registered as active farmers, they did not declare any livestock for use on these lands.
The audits also revealed that the declared rental prices for the grazing lands bore no relation to market rates typically paid by livestock farmers. Furthermore, the same private grazing plots were used repeatedly across different lease agreements with different producers who had nearly identical last names. Some plots listed as private in 2020 actually belonged to the Greek state during the 2017–2018 period.
For these reasons, Ms. Tycheropoulou requested that Mr. Melas file a report with the judicial authorities to investigate potential criminal offenses committed by the producers and alleged landowners under audit.
The “Hot” Findings Reports Left in the Drawer
However, Mr. Melas never forwarded Ms. Tycheropoulou’s audit reports to the judiciary. According to Data Journalists, when the European Public Prosecutor’s Office requested documents related to suspected fraud cases identified or reported to the Economic Crime Unit that were under investigation, Mr. Melas claimed that he no longer had the files and had destroyed them.
Ultimately, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office filed criminal charges in some of the cases mentioned in Ms. Tycheropoulou’s audits that had been brought to Mr. Melas’s attention. These cases have been referred to trial.
The trial of Mr. Melas and Ms. Reppa was scheduled to take place on May 22, 2025, before the Fourth Three-Member Misdemeanor Court of Athens. However, it was postponed to October 2025 due to a scheduling conflict involving one of Mr. Melas’s attorneys.
The trial is of particular interest because the European Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating OPEKEPE’s granting of grazing land use subsidies from 2017 through 2024. It remains unclear why Mr. Melas did not forward the reports to the judiciary as his predecessor, Grigoris Varras, had done.
They’re “hunting” the employee who uncovered the irregularities
It’s worth noting that Paraskevi Tycheropoulou, the former head of OPEKEPE’s Internal Audit Directorate, has endured her own personal “Calvary” over the past few years. She has been removed from her position, and OPEKEPE has initiated three disciplinary proceedings against her. Additionally, two criminal complaints have been filed against her, alleging embezzlement of documents. According to Data Journalists, these were official documents found in her personal office at OPEKEPE, raising questions about whether this truly constitutes embezzlement. To this day, two of the three disciplinary cases have been “frozen,” while the third is ongoing as authorities investigate potential disciplinary responsibilities. OPEKEPE’s attitude toward an employee who uncovered irregularities – cases that have led to prosecutions and, in one instance, a conviction – is striking.
ΟΠΕΚΕΠΕ: Διώκουν την υπάλληλο που αποκάλυψε το σκάνδαλο με τις αγροτικές επιδοτήσεις
Varras’s reports to the prosecutor’s office
In 2020, Grigoris Varras, the then-president of OPEKEPE, informed the prosecutor’s office about various cases of illegal subsidies allegedly granted by OPEKEPE to producers between 2017 and 2020. Mr. Varras is an associate professor at the University of Ioannina and, according to reports at the time, was personally appointed by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis to lead OPEKEPE.
Mr. Varras reported one of the cases in writing to the prosecutor’s office. It involved producers originally from Crete. In 2020, these producers submitted applications for the allocation of the national reserve, using rented private grazing lands in various parts of the country. However, according to Mr. Varras’s findings, none of the producers actually owned livestock despite being registered as farmers. An internal investigation at OPEKEPE revealed that lands listed as private in previous years were public property. In other words, these producers appeared to have rented thousands of acres of grazing land within a single year. Furthermore, the rental prices for the grazing lands were reportedly much lower than usual market rates, raising suspicions that these leases might have been fictitious in order to collect EU subsidies from the national reserve. These subsidies amounted to approximately €250,000. The prosecutor’s office launched a preliminary investigation. Subsequently, charges were filed against 16 individuals, who were referred to trial before the Three-Member Court of Appeals for Felonies.
Professor Varras’s reports to the prosecutor’s office were based on audits conducted by Paraskevi Tycheropoulou, the former head of OPEKEPE’s Internal Audit Directorate.
However, things took an unexpected turn. About a year after his appointment, Makis Voridis, the Minister of Agricultural Development, requested that Mr. Varras be removed from his position as OPEKEPE president. Publicly, Mr. Varras linked his dismissal to “organized interests” and “European subsidies.” Shortly after his removal, he was appointed special advisor to the Administration and Organization Office of the Prime Minister’s General Secretariat.
