Hotels, playgrounds, pavilions, schools, houses and even swimming pools turned out to be built on the property of the Greek state rail company (OSE). All this at a time when the responsible for the ownership of the Greek railways are required to use these properties of € 4.6 billion total value to secure the revenue that will go to repay the € 10 billion.debt of the company. Moreover, it was directly stated during the meeting with the experts of the Troika that the profit from the exploitation of these properties should be about € 500 million a year.
"There are even cases of retired railways employees that gave OSE’s property to their relatives. Invoices of pavilion were submitted to me that instead of paying rent has made donations to friendly railway unions. We found a playground of a sports club in Thessaloniki built on our property. Yet, we do not know how it happened, nor are we familiar with the activities of this club," said for Ta Nea Newspaper Nikolaos Ioannidis, the chairman of GEA OSE - a subsidiary of OSE managing the real estates of the state rail company.
The OSE’s properties of 90,000 acres have been left on their own for decades and now they decreased with hundreds, maybe even thousands of acres. The railways property was virtually abandoned until 2006, when the satellite imaging of the geo-information system was completed. The analysis of the constantly updated data shows that there are many different types of violations related to illegal privatization of land belonging to the state rail company, at least on paper. Indicative is the case of Kurks where a pool was built and more and more land, which otherwise belongs to the railways, is being marked. More precisely, a phenomenon of moving fences at the Afidnon station is being observed so that to "eat" the land belonging to the railways!
There is another example in the Arnisa village, Pella region. It shows that houses were built on the properties of OSE. The people charged to make the property profitable said that councilors make more problems than private companies.The most striking example is the city of Larissa, where in the 1980s the mayor declared the property of OSE for "green" but there has never been expropriation of land. In this case, neither railways can do anything, nor the municipality can implement its plans, they said from OSE.
An OSE employee gave an example that clearly shows the way of thinking of some mayors: "We have rented two years ago a property of OSE in Agii Anargiri to a private company to make a flower shop. The next day the municipality bulldozers came to break down the building and hand a poster saying that the property of OSE belongs to the municipality. It took us a very long time to issue a court order, but the flower shop finally started to work."
Another typical example is the park in Kalamata. They stated from OSE that the municipality has taken this coastal property from them with a loan and rented it to become a park, but for nothing in return. "The contract expired, but how will OSE get its best located property in town back? And people will oppose this and they will be right," they admitted from OSE. The railway park in Kalamata is one of the symbols of the city awarded by the European Union, where you can see engines of the early history of trains.
According to Nikolaos Ioannidis the value of the railway property exploitation is "a myth", because although it is worth € 4.6 billion, it is of no serious investor interest. In addition to the violations of private companies and councilors who think that a property is separated from the railway infrastructure and they have the right to use it, about 80% of the 4500 buildings of the organization have been declared cultural heritage. What private company will take this building, knowing that it will need a permission even to move a brick not knowing when its harrowing of hell would end for the bureaucracy?" asked the President of GEA OSE. Mr. Ioannidis gave an example with the station in Chalcis, which was declared a cultural heritage, but the activities to put it into operation are frozen for months. The warehouses in Alexandroupoli in Karditsa also could have become restaurants or entertainment centers, but their tenants have failed to submit the documents to change their use.
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