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The Greek police have revealed a large-scale scheme for draining money from the Greek government, involving a non-governmental organization (NGO), three operating Greek diplomats, current and former officials. The fraud is worth 9,000,000 euro and the details of it were communicated to the press by speaker of the Greek police Christos Partenis.
    The NGO had received large amounts from the office for international cooperation and economic development at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Greece for projects related to the clearing of minefields in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq and Lebanon. The police investigation lasted 20 months and covered the period 2000-2004. The organization had hired foreign sappers, forcing them to return part of their remuneration to the employer in the form of donations. In some cases, the employees had to return 30% of their remuneration, which however was not recorded on the payroll.  

    In addition to this unusual practice, the projects in these three countries were not endorsed by the relevant Greek embassies there. They were funded without the provision of reports on the completion of the projects and the projects themselves were approved on the basis of documents in Serbian and Arabic, with no corresponding Greek translation.
    Part of the funding of the foundation was spent for office rental in Athens, supplies, purchases from a supermarket, for the parking place of the car of the president of the organization. The prosecutor has ordered the seizure of the[property of the foundation president and of his wife in the Athens district of Ambelokipi (two properties) and Rhodes (also two properties) and the luxury car he travelled around in.
    After the issuance of an international arrest warrant for the couple, the police captured them in Cyprus, where they had lived since August 2013. Last Friday they were questioned by the economic prosecutor who had ordered their imprisonment before trial on charges of money laundering, fraud and issuance of false documents.