With Greece keeping its ignominious position as the most corrupt country in the European Union, the country’s crushing economic crisis is making the problem worse, according to a report by the Public Administration Inspector General Leandros Rakintzis.
His report, which covers 2012, found the most troubled areas were in insurance funds, municipalities and especially urban planning services, along with politics and the media.
He said he discovered hundreds of millions of euros of fraud after inspecting the National Organization for Healthcare Provision (EOPYY) which has a deficit of some 1.2 billion euros ($1.56 billion) and almost no accurate record-keeping system.
He said the agency also signed off on expensive care for politicians and the privileged in foreign countries instead of in Greece at a time when more than million citizens are without health insurance.
The report also stated that the government was paying fraudulent returns to farms, such as an 85-year-old who got four million euros According to a publication by tovima, the report also reveals discoveries regarding illegal VA returns to farmers, with the case of a 85-year old woman who received 4 million euros ($5.22 million) in Value Added Tax (VAT) returns for farming onions.
Furthermore, the report revealed a wide phenomenon of counterfeit invoices, as many cooperatives hadn’t submitted tax or VAT returns or cumulative invoices, while the tax offices hadn’t performed any regular audits for more than a decade. Those irregularities were revealed after the demand of Rakintzis to reevaluate the VAT return cases in each tax office separately, due to the unprecedented increase of counterfeit invoices.
Finally, the Inspector General’s investigation revealed an unusually great number of offshores in the region Kranidi in Argolida, the so-called Lichtenstein of Greece, as it has 197 off-shore companies, among which 186 are active. The Finance Ministry intervened and said it collected four million euros in taxes.
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