Police cases dominate annual corruption report

Police officers were involved in almost half of all corruption investigations in Greece in 2019, according to the annual report of the internal affairs department of the security forces (YEFSA), a mechanism set up last year to tackle crime and corruption within law enforcement as well as the wider public sector.

Police corruption accounted for almost half of the cases (43.9%), ahead of civil servants (27.6%) and coast guard officers (11.6%). The investigations implicating police officers concerned cases of passive bribery, causing bodily harm, threats and defamation. For civil servants, cases involved bribery, false certification and breach of duty.

One of the most important corruption cases included in the report concerned the so-called “tug cartel” operating in the port of Thessaloniki. Eighteen people were arrested, including shipowners, coast guard officers and navigators, whose crimes included extortion, fraud and bribery.