Investigators for the European Public Prosecutor’s Office raided company offices and homes across Attica and the northern town of Kastoria last week, unwinding a Value Added Tax (VAT) carousel scheme built around small electronic goods. The operation seized nearly €5.4million in cryptocurrency, three luxury cars and €99,000 in cash, on top of estimated losses of €71million to Greek and EU budgets.
The European Public Prosecutor’s Office, known as EPPO, has operated in Greece since 2021, pursuing dozens of cases linked to subsidy misuse, customs evasion and tax fraud. Its Athens branch now sits at the centre of two very different threads, which taken together describe how Greece is actually faring on graft.
Days after the VAT raids, EPPO indicted four sitting Members of Parliament (MPs) over the country’s agricultural subsidy scandal, compounding a season already crowded with financial crime cases. Together the two prosecutions sketch a country producing genuine prosecutorial results even as its own institutions test how far European oversight of Greek officials can reach.
Second Indictment Reaches Athens
This second case is far removed from consumer electronics. EPPO has charged 22 defendants, including four New Democracy MPs, over the alleged misuse of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funds. The funds are administered by the Payment and Control Agency for Guidance and Guarantee Community Aids (OPEKEPE).
Three of the MPs, Kostas Skrekas, Christos Boukoros and Maximos Senetakis, stand accused of instigating breach of trust, while a fourth, Katerina Papakosta, is accused of false attestation. Seven other sitting MPs saw their cases archived for insufficient evidence, alongside two former MPs.
The scandal already carries a heavy financial toll. The European Commission imposed a €392 million financial correction last year and ordered OPEKEPE’s closure. Agriculture minister Konstantinos Tsiaras resigned amid the fallout, and Parliament lifted the immunity of eleven sitting MPs in April to let prosecutors proceed.
Athens Pushes Back Against Brussels
A parallel dispute now surrounds these prosecutions, concerning who actually controls EPPO’s work inside Greece. Greece’s Supreme Judicial Council granted three delegated European prosecutors only a two-year renewal instead of the five years EPPO’s own college had approved.
European Chief Prosecutor Laura Kövesi appealed, but Greece’s Supreme Court rejected her case by 72 votes to 10, ruling that EPPO lacked standing to act on the prosecutors’ behalf.
Kövesi later wrote to the European Commission, warning that legislative changes in Greece, including a special procedure shielding MPs from ordinary criminal process, undermine EPPO’s independent functioning there. Kövesi has described OPEKEPE as an “acronym for corruption, nepotism and clientelism,” a description which has not endeared Kövesi to the government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
International Rankings Register Modest Gains
Set against this institutional friction, Greece’s broader corruption record reads as a country improving slowly. In Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), Greece ranked 56th of 182 countries with a score of 50 out of 100, three places higher than the previous year.
Only Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Malta scored worse among EU members, keeping Greece in the bloc’s lower tier despite the gain. Government officials credit judicial reforms, including faster first-instance rulings and a €550 million court-building programme, for the improvement.
What Lies Ahead for Athens
None of this settles whether Greece’s institutions and Brussels’ prosecutors can work in step over the years ahead. The Commission’s conditionality mechanism, which can freeze EU funds over judicial independence concerns, gives Kövesi’s complaint genuine financial leverage.
Should Athens keep narrowing EPPO’s practical authority, further intervention from the Commission, or a case before the Court of Justice of the European Union, looks like a realistic next step. For now, Greece can point to record seizures and a widening list of indicted officials as proof its prosecutors are working.
Whether Brussels judges this sufficient turns on whether Athens allows those prosecutors to work free of domestic interference.
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