PASOK outrage at land probe exemption
A decision by Supreme Court prosecutor Giorgos Sanidas to exclude government ministers from an investigation into an exchange of land between the state and a monastery on Mount Athos – on the grounds that the ministers in question had been «misled» about the exchange by state advisers – sparked outrage yesterday from PASOK. The main opposition party said the move effectively «erased any political responsibilities» for the exchange. PASOK’s spokesperson Giorgos Papaconstantinou condemned the move by Sanidas as «an evident attempt to make it appear that no one is to blame.» Responding to the criticism by PASOK, government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos simply noted that the «judiciary will take a close look at the case.» He added that all ministers implicated in the land exchange had acted in accordance with the Constitution. Meanwhile, the former general secretary of the Agricultural Development Ministry, Thomas Alifakiotis, claimed that he had been forced to resign in August 2005 by then minister Evangelos Bassiakos after refusing to sign a decision for the exchange of land near Lake Vistonida, northern Greece, for sought-after swaths of real estate in other parts of the north. According to Alifakiotis, Bassiakos had claimed to have been pressured from above himself to push through the exchange. Bassiakos’s associates yesterday rebuffed the claims of the former general secretary on the former minister’s behalf. The alleged exchange is one of several believed to have taken place between the state and the Vatopedi Monastery. Sanidas has said he believes that the land exchanges had been to the detriment of the state, suggesting that state officials had done the monastery a favor.
