Revealing details about the activities of Tycheropoulou and Simandrakos at OPEKEPE was made in the sworn testimony to the Financial Police by Dimitra Chalikia.
The former vice president of the organization described the events that took place within it and led to the exposure of the criminal organization operating in Agrinio and Kozani.
According to the Financial Police’s referral, Dimitra Chalikia “voluntarily appeared at our office and was examined under oath.”
As she testified “in the year 2024, by decision of the then-president of the aforementioned Organization Kyriakos Bampasidis, the locker of the Organization’s employee, Ms. Paraskevi Tycheropoulou, who served as the locker of the Organization’s employee, Ms. Paraskevi TYCHEROPOULOU, who served as Director of the Organization’s Internal Audit Department, and a relevant committee report was drafted regarding the findings inside said cabinet, by a committee composed of OPEKEPE employees.
Specifically, the cabinet in question contained hierarchical appeals by producers to the then president of OPEKEPE, Mr. Evangelos Simandrakos, regarding which the prescribed procedures were not followed and illegal subsidies.”
The cover letter states that “in support of the allegations, our Agency conducted relevant correspondence to ascertain whether, in the year 2024, a search was carried out with the assistance of a bailiff in a locked cabinet belonging to an employee of OPEKEPE, and if so, to provide us with the relevant written record as well as any supplementary information.
Our office was informed that, pursuant to unanimous decision No. 298 of October 14, 2024, of the OPEKEPE Board of Directors, the then Head of the Internal Audit Directorate (IAD), Ms. PARASKEVI TYCHEROPOULOU, was replaced. Despite the written orders of the then-president of the Organization and the extrajudicial summons served to her, she refused to hand over the Internal Audit Directorate’s files to the new head of that Directorate following her replacement.
Subsequently, on October 25, 2024, by decision of the then-president, cabinet no. 12, located on the 5th floor, in office 503 of the OPEKEPE Central Service, where the office of the Head of the DEE was located, by a professional locksmith in the presence of the Organization’s President, the Head of the Legal Service, and three other Heads of Directorates of OPEKEPE, and its contents were recorded by a Court Bailiff, who drafted No. 381/25.10.2024 Report on the Inventory of Movable Property.
From a review of the aforementioned Verification Report, which is submitted along with other relevant correspondence, it was found that, among other items, twelve (12) hierarchical appeals (2 from legal entities and 10 from natural persons) as well as the responses from the former OPEKEPE accepting them, including 6 Hierarchical Appeals from the leader of the criminal group S…K….y, 2 legal entities representing him, as well as -5- other members of the group, specifically: (7 legal and natural persons follow, omitted for privacy reasons)».
These are the hierarchical appeals that led to the criminal organization recently dismantled by the Financial Police.
Dimitra Chalikia addressed the issue again in an interview, revealing why, even though all of this is known to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, there is a radio silence.
“OPEKEPE’s problems began in 2010 and had to do with a conflict of business interests,” he told SKAI Radio and Aris Portosalte, unraveling the story up to the latest arrests.
“It’s not just the people who were arrested who committed fraud. It’s also those who helped them commit the fraud. Who was paying these fraudsters through the organization, knowing full well they were fraudsters? And who are these KYDs that were caught? These KYDs, along with four others and the Agrinio Agricultural Cooperatives Union, are the main shareholders of OPEKEPE’s technical consultant. “The people say, ‘Yiannis treats, Yiannis drinks, Yiannis commits the fraud,’” she noted, referring to Cognitera.
“How did these people end up at OPEKEPE as technical consultants? They were selected through very strange—to put it politely—tender procedures, and on these committees, both for evaluation and for the handover of deliverables, it was always the same person: Ms. Tycheropoulou. Who paid these fraudsters who were involved in the hierarchical appeals, and even though they each owed between 150,000 and 450,000 euros, they were paid back without justification? “Ms. Tycheropoulou,” he continued, linking the organization’s key figure to what has transpired and explaining that the appeals bear her signature.
She was revealing about the reasons why P. Tycheropoulou has found supporters: “She has been embraced because those whom Ms. Tycheropoulou helped install within the organization as technical advisors have very significant business interests behind them. Huge, and political as well. They have nothing to do with the 1–1.5 million the technical advisor was receiving,” he clarified.
