ΒΑΜΟΣ ΑΛΑ ΠΛΑΓΙΑ

VAMOS, CRETE — Myth-making has been part of life on Crete since the Greek goddess Athena was credited with growing the first olive tree on this rugged Mediterranean island.
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Angelos Tzortzinis for the International Herald Tribune

Yannis Matsamakis, a olive farmer in Crete, stumbled on a list of fraudulent subsidy claims which he brought to the local prosecutor.
But even the gods would have been pushed to conjure up a harvest as big as the one claimed by a group of olive growers around this tiny, rustic town. It could only have been achieved, neighbors joke, by planting lines of olive trees across the Mediterranean to the island of Santorini, about 150 kilometers, or 90 miles, away.
The story of the miracle harvest turned up on an application for European agricultural subsidies that surfaced in 2007; officials determined the amount requested was well in excess of what the farmers could conceivably have been entitled to. But something disturbed investigators more than the simple size of the claim: It was filed not by the hard-pressed growers themselves, but by the leaders of their agricultural co-operative — one of thousands of locally powerful, politically connected producers’ associations across Europe.
In poor, remote areas of Southern Europe, evidence is emerging that what happened in Crete — where the European Union is demanding a refund of nearly €375,000, or about $540,000, paid to the collective that operates around Vamos — is not a minor aberration but a symptom of a broader problem involving co-ops.
Investigators believe that tens of millions of euros may have been lost in the few cases they have investigated — which they say are just a snapshot of the wider picture. They are currently looking into four new cases, while five have been completed.
Writing in a report about several scams involving two Portuguese banana co-ops two years ago, the European Union’s fraud investigative agency, known as OLAF, said it had found “that this pattern of abuse by some producer organizations was a problem throughout” the bloc.
The victims, OLAF says, include many farmers whom the co-ops were established to protect but who are believed to see little of the illicit proceeds, even though the investigators believe some of their bank accounts have been used to launder them.
“We have noticed a clear trend with a growing number of cases involving co-operatives or producer organizations,” said Jörg Wojahn, a spokesman for OLAF. “As with any loss of E.U. funding through fraud, we are very concerned about the situation. But these cases also appear to show that farmers, as well as taxpayers, are being cheated by fraudsters misusing the agricultural subsidy system.”
Experts say that sharp regional differences in the way farming is organized shape the problem.
“The further south you go, the more opaque the administration by the cooperative tends to be,” said Brian Gardner, author of “European Agriculture: Policies, Production and Trade.” “You often find that the mayor and the president of the cooperative are one and the same person.”
Northern farmers tend to be businesspeople themselves, he said, and scrutinize the activities of the cooperatives closely. But small producers in the south can be less assertive.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/world/europe/28olives.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=europe

Άλλη μια ξεφτίλα για την Κρήτη από την μεγαλύτερη σε κυκλοφορία εφημερίδα της Αμερικής Νιου Γιουρκ τάιμ. Εν συντομία η μετάφραση.....

.....Το λάδι που παράγεται στην Κρήτη θα μπορούσε να αντιστοιχεί σε ελαιόδενδρα μόνο αν υπήρχε ένας κάμπος περίπου 150 χιλιομέτρων, γεμάτος γραμμικές ελιές, σε μάκρος που να έφτανε στην Σαντορίνη.

.....αυτό που συνέβη στην Κρήτη - όπου η Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση απαιτεί την επιστροφή των περίπου 375.000 €, ή περίπου 540.000 δολαρίων, το οποίο καταβάλλεται σαν επιδότηση στην γύρω περιοχή του Βάμου. Το έγκλημα που έγινε στην περιοχή μάλλον είναι οργανωμένο. Και το ξέπλυμα των χρημάτων έγινε δια μέσου των λογαριασμών των καλλιεργητών.........Καληνύχτα