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Pensions amounting to 64.4 million euro were paid to 3,423 deceased pensioners in the public sector, as revealed by the census of pensioners in the public sector carried out by the Directorate General "Accounting".

The case involves amounts illegally paid in pensions as shown by the data announced by Deputy Minister of Finance Christos Staikouras. He also specified the actions taken by the competent authorities to refund this amount. In particular, 42.2 million euro of the amount in question have been so far refunded in the following ways:

• 27.6 million euro were withdrawn from the accounts of pensioners through the system for interbank operations (DIAS).

• 14.6 million euro were partially refunded by a pay-in receipt on the part of the joint account holders and were partly charged to the relevant tax offices of the joint account holders of the deceased pensioners or their heirs.

• As for the remaining 22.2 million euro, the procedure for their repayment is continuing through the local tax authorities, involving the heirs and joint account holders of deceased pensioners.

As stated by Christos Staikouras, this was the first comprehensive census of pensioners in the public sector after 1949, when the last such census was performed. The procedure was completed in October 2012 when 2,798 pensioners were not involved in the census. Since then the authorities have carried out various procedures to specify the number of persons who are actually entitled to a pension and to refund the unduly paid amounts. The profit for the treasury due to the census of pensioners amounts to 1.3 million euro a month.  

As reported, the examination of the cases of deceased pensioners found 358 cases of irregularly paid amounts of over 30,000 euro. These cases have already been submitted to the competent authorities, namely the police and the prosecutor’s office, for the following reasons:

• Undeclared death, which is probably due to fraud, as the authorities did not find the unduly paid amounts in the bank accounts of the deceased, as they had been withdrawn.

• The money was not in the bank accounts although it was intended for the payment of different utility bills, loans and other obligations, and it was not possible to draw on it.

The amount of the pensions unduly paid to the bank accounts of pensioners in these 358 cases is 26.6 million euro.

According to the internal investigations department of the Greek police, the investigation that lasted more than 12 months has already established 92 cases of suspected fraud committed in the period 1991-2012.

It is noteworthy that the composed legal file consisting of 1,439 pages has already been submitted to the prosecutor's office and is in the preliminary study as well as the fact that, in other cases, the date of trial has already been set.

Typical is a case in Karditsa where the pension paid from the year 2000 to July 2012 amounted to 167,189 euro and the pensioner who was entitled to this pension died on 10 September 2000.

To avoid similar cases of fraud against the state in the future the Ministry of Finance has introduced a complete census of pensioners in the public sector every five years. "This initiative combined with the introduction of a system for timely notification of changes in the civil status of pensioners will eliminate the possibility of third parties obtaining for a long period of time sums paid to the bank accounts of deceased pensioners due to the deliberate failure to declare their death in the relevant services", emphasized Christos Staikouras.