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Two magistrates have finished questioning more than 40 witnesses in connection with the Vatopedi land swap, one of several corruption scandals that precipitated the downfall of the previous New Democracy government, and are ready to level charges against more than 30 people including some politicians.

The investigation by magistrates Irini Kalou and Nikitas Christopoulos has reportedly produced a bulky case file that includes photographs of the title deeds of properties belonging to the Vatopedi Monastery which is alleged to have benefited in a land swap with the state that cost taxpayers around 100 million euros.

The magistrates, who in May brought charges against “all persons responsible,” are now due to start bringing these charges against specific individuals whose identities remain unclear but are believed to include certain prominent notaries.

The charges include six felonies – breach of faith to the detriment of the state, joint breach of faith to the detriment of the state, making false declarations to the detriment of the state, money laundering and instigation of these acts or direct involvement in them – and three misdemeanors, namely breach of duty, illegal transfer of property rights attaching to a monument and violation of building regulations.

According to sources, charges will also be brought against certain politicians even though their alleged misdeeds are subject to the statute of limitations. Judicial sources told that charges would be lodged against these politicians as a matter of principle “to show that they too would have faced trial if their alleged misdeeds had not been prescribed.”

Two senior monks from the Vatopedi Monastery, which is implicated in a land-swap deal with the state, yesterday faced an appeals court on charges of being moral accomplices to a breach of duty. Ephraim, the monastery’s chief monk, and Arsenios, its financial manager, have consistently denied any wrongdoing in the land-swap affair believed to have cost taxpayers some 100 million euros. Maria Psalti, the former judge of a first instance court in Rhodope, northern Greece, where tracts of land involved in the swap are located, faced the court yesterday on the same charges.

Just a few months after news broke about the Vatopedi land-swap scandal, the Supreme Court prosecutor this weekend called for an investigation into another suspicious exchange between the Orthodox Church and the state.

Giorgos Sanidas ordered a preliminary investigation into the transfer of a prime piece of land on the Aegean island of Skyros to a Mount Athos monastery and the purchase by the Greek state, allegedly at an excessive price, of a much smaller plot belonging to the monastery.

Sanidas wants an Athens prosecutor to determine whether the monastery’s acquisition of the 3,700-hectare plot on Skyros should lead to any individuals being charged with defrauding the state. He notes that the court rulings relating to the land transfer “were the result of misleading evidence and testimonies” and therefore are “unlawful.”

Suspects in the Vatopedi scandal, which has troubled the government since last year, are set to face charges for six felonies and three misdemeanors in connection with claims that a land exchange between the state and the Mount Athos monastery was weighted heavily in favor of the monks.

Chief appeals prosecutor Kyriakos Karoutsos yesterday issued the charges against “all persons responsible,” a catch-all legal term. Magistrate Eirini Kalou will now have to decide exactly who will be charged.

The six felonies that Karoutsos identified are breach of faith to the detriment of the state, joint breach of faith to the detriment of the state, making false declarations to the detriment of the state, money laundering, as well as instigation of these acts or direct involvement in them.

The three misdemeanors that he ascertained are breach of duty, illegal transfer of property rights attaching to a monument and violation of building regulations.

Karoutsos also decided that 33 official legal advisers to the state and seven senior monks at Vatopedi should not face prosecution because there is not enough evidence to suggest any wrongdoing.

A total of 62 people were questioned as suspects during the long judicial investigation into the case. So, 22 of them could still face charges after Kalou has finished her probe.

The possibility of any politicians facing charges disappeared after a parliamentary committee that looked into the case last year failed to arrive at a common conclusion over whether members of the government had intentionally set up the deal to favor the monastery at the expense of taxpayers. Nevertheless, last October then government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos resigned after he had been implicated in the scandal even though he denied any wrongdoing. Last month, the outgoing Supreme Court prosecutor Giorgos Sanidas prevented the case file being resubmitted to Parliament, insisting that no new evidence implicating any politicians had been uncovered.

As revelers prepare to wheel out a float satirizing a senior monk at the heart of the Vatopedi land exchange scandal this weekend for the culmination of Carnival celebrations in the central port of Patras, clerics say the effigy is an unfair blow against all priests.

“It is an affront to the clergy, to the Church, to Orthodoxy,” said Timotheos Papastavrou, a member of a local religious group that appealed for the float to be banned. “Does a child who attends the parade know Ephraim or what he did? He just sees the clergy being ridiculed,” he added.

Thessaloniki’s outspoken Bishop Anthimos said the float’s inclusion in the parade was “a very grave mistake.”

Patras’s Deputy Mayor Alexis Skarmeas defended the move. “Our intention is not to offend the Church but to satirize and not condemn a particular individual for specific activities with political ramifications.”

 

One of the Church of Greece’s most prominent figures, Bishop Anthimos of Thessaloniki, yesterday intervened in the growing dispute over a piece of forestland in the northern city that has been given to the Church for the construction of a home for the elderly.

Anthimos responded to the news that Thessaloniki chief prosecutor Dimitris Papageorgiou has ordered a preliminary investigation into how just over 3.2 hectares of public land ended up in the hands of the Church.

The case bears similarities to the recent scandal involving the exchange of land between the state and the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos, which is also being investigated amid allegations that taxpayers were shortchanged.

However, Anthimos yesterday insisted that everything in the exchange of the plot in the Panorama district of Thessaloniki was above board.

“No law has been broken,” he told Skai Radio. “We have a huge file with all the paperwork.” Thessaloniki Prefect Panayiotis Psomiadis also insists that nothing illegal took place.

However, pressure for the transfer of the land to be investigated is growing. The Thessaloniki Bar Association expressed its “surprise and deep concern about the terms and conditions under which the construction will take place.”

Three MPs, from PASOK and the Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), have also submitted questions in Parliament about the issue.

Papageorgiou wants to find out why the land was given to the Church so that it could build a hospital, whereas the construction plans now indicate that a home for the poor and elderly with 150 rooms will instead be built.

The land was part of a 100-hectare estate that had been donated to the Health Ministry several decades ago.

A Patras court yesterday was discussing an appeal by a local missionary organization that city authorities be fined for authorizing the float which, it claims, is offensive to religious sentiment.

The float, which depicts three cunning-faced monks, is due to appear at the city's annual Carnival parade on March 1. One of the monks depicted is supposed to be Ephraim, the former head of the Vatopedi Monastery which was implicated in a multimillion-euro land swap with the state.

Several monasteries of the northern Mount Athos community which includes Vatopedi have reportedly written to local authorities seeking the withdrawal of the float.

Meanwhile, Ephraim, the former head monk at the Vatopedi Monastery, and his assistant have been given until Friday to prepare their testimony for the investigation into their refusal to appear before a parliamentary committee last month and answer questions about their involvement in a land swap with the state.

The Bank of Greece issued a report about Vatopedi’s finances for deputies late on Thursday in which it is suggested that withdrawals totaling some 6 million euros from the monastery’s accounts remain unaccounted for.

The report also indicates that Dimitris Pelekis, the father-in-law of former Merchant Marine Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis, was paid 1 million euros for providing the monastery with legal representation in its property deals.