ATHENS: Greece’s government on Saturday said it had replaced Makis Voridis a day after the migration minister resigned over claims he defrauded European farm subsidies while holding the agriculture brief.
Government spokesman Pavlos Marinakis said in a statement that Thanos Plevris, a former minister of health and former member of the Greek far-right LAOS party, will be sworn in on Monday to replace Voridis.
Voridis’s resignation came a week after the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) sent a case file to the parliament in Athens to investigate the alleged involvement of two former ministers in Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s government in the misappropriation of EU funds.
Voridis, a government heavy hitter, was agricultural development minister between 2019 and 2021 before being handed the migration portfolio in January.
In his resignation letter, he said he had “committed no wrongdoing” and had opted to resign following a request by the opposition PASOK socialist party to set up a parliament committee to probe the allegations.
“Being a suspect in a criminal act is not compatible with the status of a member of government,“ Voridis told Mitsotakis, who accepted his resignation.
Voridis’s political career has not been without controversy: in 1994 he founded the far-right Hellenic Front, whose slogan at the time was “a red card for illegal migrants”.
In 2005, he joined the nationalist LAOS party, representing them in parliament from 2007 before moving to Mitsotakis’s conservative New Democracy movement from 2012.
Greek media reported that the second former agricultural development minister in the European investigation is Lefteris Avgenakis, who was in the role from 2023 to last year and is also an ND lawmaker.
At the end of May, investigators conducted a search at the Athens offices of the Greek subsidy agency OPEKEPE and seized documents and electronic equipment.
They then indicated that “a significant number” of people had gained payment rights between 2019 and 2022, mainly by falsely claiming public land.
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