Nikos Salatas has filed complaints regarding the activities of European authorities in the case of OPEKEPE.
Mr. Salatas made pointed remarks about a “selective” investigation that left a specific period of the Organization’s administration unscathed.
The issue of audits at OPEKEPE has been brought back to the forefront of political and judicial current events by the Organization’s former president, Nikos Salatas, has brought the issue of audits at OPEKEPE back into the spotlight of political and judicial current events, making clear criticisms of the way the prosecutorial authorities handled the matter. In a conversation with journalist Stamatis Zacharos, Mr. Salatas cited recent news reports that support his views, asking pointedly: “Did you read an article today in the newspaper *Manifesto* about the guilty silence?”.
The former president of the Organization described what came to his attention as soon as he took office, claiming that he identified gaps and omissions in the investigations conducted by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office regarding the management of past agricultural subsidies.
“I went to OPEKEPE on 3/2/25 and immediately discovered—within 5 days—that a period of OPEKEPE’s under the leadership of former OPEKEPE President Evangelos Simandrakos and Deputy Director Paraskevi Tycheropoulou, was not audited by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office”, he stated emphatically.
Nikos Salatas continued his “attacks” against the judicial officials handling the OPEKEPE case, referring to “catastrophic mistakes” and drawing an institutional parallel between the situation and the Novartis case regarding the lack of punishment for judicial misconduct.
Journalist Stamatis Zacharos, posing a direct question to the former president of the Organization: “Will we see prosecutors being convicted? It’s not common, which is why I’m asking.”
Mr. Salatas argued that the justice system must scrutinize its own affairs with the same rigor, as impunity in the past paved the way for new institutional abuses. “That’s wrong. Because if a few people had been punished in the Novartis case, none of this would have happened,” he pointed out emphatically.
This remark prompted the journalist to seek further clarification on whether the two court cases were one and the same, asking: “Are these similar cases?”
Nikos Salatas was quick to set the record straight, emphasizing that despite their differences, the common thread is institutional abuse, which in fact takes on even more alarming dimensions in the current case involving OPEKEPE. “Not exactly. But even back then, we had those who strayed from the rules and were not punished. This one is even worse—our own,” he emphasized.
Concluding his remarks, the former president of the Organization noted that: “I have no way of knowing who is behind this. I do know that the prosecutor’s office has made disastrous mistakes.”
