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Suicides in the country have increased dramatically by approximately 40% after the outbreak of the economic crisis. This show the latest data and epidemiological studies, said Health Minister Andreas Loverdos.

Yet, the World Health Organization puts Greece still among the countries that have been ranked last by the number of suicides with less than 6.5 people that have attempted their lives in 2010 per 100 000 inhabitants. The Minister of Health stressed that the solution to this problem is one of the main priorities of the European Union and the Ministry.

A document Minister Loverdos submitted to the Parliament, prepared after the request of the independent MP Levteris Avgenakis, report that the pressures on many freelance entrepreneurs and professionals as well as on all Greeks, but especially on those living in Iraklion, and the increase in unemployment dead-locked many people, which the dramatic increase in suicides during the past period prove.

There were 20 suicides only on the island of Crete in the last two years, the latest being of a businessman who took his life in the central market of the town of Iraklio, said lawmaker Avgenakis. The businessman did not manage to overcome the psychological pressure from money-lenders and blackmailers as he owed them money, they say. In the case of the businessman from Crete, his wife noticed that he and his relatives had issued cheques to persons with whom her husband had no commercial relations. The strange thing that the wife noticed is that her husband owed them 1,073,406, euros but paid them the amount of 3,006,256 euros in cheques.

A few days ago, the MP Levteris Avgenakis received a reply from the Minister of Citizen protection Christos Papoutsis that the police monitor the development of the forms of crime across the country and enter into collaborations to deal with these phenomena of blackmailing by loan sharks and others.

In response to a question for the criminal circles of money-lenders asked by LAOS MP Asterios Rondoulis, the Minister of Economy Eleftherios Venizelos said in writing that the Office for Combating Economic Crimes, which acts to combat tax evasion, black trade and economic crime, is working to find and break the groups of money-lenders.

"According to the procedure, the involved individual and legal persons are subject to tax audits and removing the secrecy of bank accounts, so as to reveal whether they are hiding black money and whether there was illegal transfer of capital," Venizelos said for Ta Nea newspaper.