FLASH
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An Athens court has suspended the prison sentences of seven people from northern Greece involved in a corruption case related to the illegal receipt of agricultural subsidies from the European Union.
The suspects used the plea bargain procedure, a legal mechanism introduced in Greece in 2019, by accepting the charges and returning 165,000 euros of the amount they were accused of. They faced criminal offenses such as fraud with EU funds, forgery of documents, money laundering and false statements.
The court accepted the request to separate their case from the main trial and sentenced them to prison terms ranging from two years and three months to three years. Sentences that were suspended. It also ordered the seizure of 20,000 euros from the bank account of one of the defendants, while the accounts of the other two were unblocked.
This case involves a total of 32 defendants, who are accused of having illegally benefited from over 250 thousand euros in agricultural subsidies during the years 2016–2018. For the remaining 25 defendants, the next hearing has been scheduled for February 5, after some of them appeared without a lawyer and the court appointed legal protection.
Most of them have declared their innocence, claiming that the indictment is vague and invalid.
The investigation was conducted by the European Public Prosecutor's Office and is related to the scandal known as OPEKEPE, after the name of the Greek agency responsible for distributing European Union agricultural funds.
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