File photo.
The government on Thursday defended four governing party lawmakers indicted in the OPEKEPE farm subsidy case and accused the opposition of rushing to judgment after the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) dropped allegations against seven other conservative lawmakers.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said the decision to shelve the cases against seven of the 11 New Democracy legislators originally investigated undermined opposition claims that Greece had become a “government of defendants.”
“For the four lawmakers who have been referred to trial on misdemeanor charges, the presumption of innocence obviously applies, as the European Public Prosecutor’s Office itself explicitly states,” Marinakis said. “The courts, and only the courts, will decide after assessing all the evidence.”
Earlier Thursday, the EPPO announced criminal proceedings against 22 people, including four serving lawmakers, over alleged irregularities involving European Union agricultural subsidies administered through Greece’s OPEKEPE payments agency. At the same time, prosecutors dropped the cases against seven other serving lawmakers, citing insufficient evidence to justify criminal prosecution.
