Galery

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An employee of the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs was arrested for embezzlement of 466,000 euro. The money had been earmarked for the payment of the salaries and needs of the Greek diplomatic missions abroad.

The 53-year-old man was charged with a felony. The pre-trial file was prepared by the Department of Home Affairs of the Greek police. The members of the department had detected the fraud in cooperation with the Department of Diplomatic Correspondence of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The inspection began when the employee’s colleagues informed that he was not going to work for long periods of time and invented all sorts of excuses for doing so.

His duties were to keep and dispose of the specific funds destined for the needs of the services of other ministries and Greece’s embassies abroad.

Recently, however, he had not submitted the sum of 153,311 euro for the salaries of the staff of various diplomatic missions, presenting flimsy excuses for this. Therefore, the department formed a commission and authorized it to open the safe.

The commission members established 52 cases in which the money had not reached the recipients, the total amount being 466,194.87 euro. In these cases, the money was missing from the envelopes and the documents were half destroyed – either the relevant file was missing, or only the accompanying document was present, or the wax seal was broken.

The authorities have found in the house and office of the employer of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and seized the following items: an illegally possessed gun, a cheque for 1,513.17 euro that had been torn into pieces, pieces of wax for sealing envelopes and parcels, many of which had been recently used, open envelopes, an official document, a record of "receiving and delivering money, keys, etc." and a receipt for earnings from gambling.

12 tickets for gambling and a large number of lottery tickets have been found on the employee too. According to the police, he had frequently visited the casino in the seaside town of Loutraki.

An employee of the police station in Patras in the Achaia region tried to justify the embezzlement of a sum of about 400,000 euro with his dependence on gambling too. He had gradually stolen the money over 4 years.

The investigation of the case began a few days ago after it was found that large sums of money were missing from the safe of the police department in Achaia. The money was for operational costs such as fuelling of patrol cars.

The head of the service has immediately informed the internal affairs department of the Greek police.

The officer has fully confessed his acts and he has been charged with embezzlement of large sums of money.