Pavlos Polakis has filed a petition and report with the Prosecutor for Economic Crime over statutory auditors’ reports on the Attica Region and EDSNA. Leaving them in a drawer for twenty-one (21) months is long enough — and an affront.
According to a statement, the MP for Chania and SYRIZA–Progressive Alliance’s shadow minister for transparency today filed, on behalf of the party and through his lawyer, Ioannis D. Apatsidis, a petition, report and memorandum with the Prosecutor for Economic Crime concerning two reports by statutory auditors (SOL S.A., a member of the Crowe network). The reports documented what the current administrations of the Attica Region and EDSNA inherited from George Patoulis’ administration for the period 2019-2023.
The report was copied to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, the National Transparency Authority, the Court of Audit, the Independent Authority for Public Contracts, the Ministry of the Interior and every other competent authority. It is also being submitted to Parliament as a petition to the ministers for the interior, environment, finance and health, who are required to respond within 25 days at the latest — although Adonis Georgiadis is expected to reply with a spectacular “And A and OU and ‘F’AP – NDFK”.
Audit reports
The findings are not from SYRIZA-Progressive Alliance. They were commissioned by Nikos Hardalias’ administration, and the Regional Governor himself handed them to the Prosecutor for Economic Crime in February 2025. Twenty-one months have passed since then. The law gives the Prosecutor for Economic Crime six months to complete the preliminary investigation. No one has been asked to provide written explanations. No one has been prosecuted. And the clock is ticking towards the statute of limitations.
Here is what the statutory auditors say, in plain English:
1. The same person on both sides of the table. Mr Patoulis was simultaneously Regional Governor of Attica and president of the Athens Medical Association. The Region he headed signed two contracts, with a combined budget of €1.62 million, with the Association he also headed. The budget for the “Hermes” programme rose from €199,006 to €1,076,500. There is not a single document showing that the services were provided in return for the payments — no timesheets, no route records, no patient data. The Region paid on the basis of minutes drawn up by the Association itself. Four of the five extensions were signed after the contracts had already expired. Masks were budgeted at €9 each, while invoices listed them at €1.90.
2. Contracts capped at 14.9% to keep them out of the Court of Audit’s sights. Eight supplementary contracts for flood-prevention and other works were capped at between 14.57% and 14.99% — just below the 15% threshold above which the Court of Audit conducts a review.
3. A bid before the invitation. For the €8 million project to deal with landslides in Kapandriti–Varnavas, the contractor’s bid was dated March 2023, while the Region sent out the invitation in April. In other words, the contractor knew before anyone else did.
4. Kineta: €18.95 million without a tender. The Independent Authority for Public Contracts found a “breach of a material procedural requirement”. Residents complained that, instead of flood-prevention works, the project involved landscaping.
5. A closed circle of contractors. A contractors’ register set up in 2015 for a two-year period was extended in 2020 “indefinitely”. Contracts went to the same firms. In 2022 and 2023, contracts were signed without a signed decision from the Regional Governor.
6. The landfill that never opened. The Grammatikou landfill began with a €19 million contract and ended up costing €96 million, without ever becoming operational. In 2022, the European Commission cancelled all EU funding and demanded the money back.
7. EDSNA: €33 million collected but not passed on. The municipalities — and therefore their residents — paid €33.17 million in landfill levies in 2022, but the money did not go where the law requires. EDSNA’s board met once in 2022 and not at all in 2023. Most tenders attracted only one bidder, with a negligible or zero discount.
8. The “recycling kiosks”. A €33.3 million tender attracted just one bidder, which offered a 0.5% discount. According to an audit by the General Accounting Office of the State, the “market research” was conducted among two companies with common economic interests, and the specifications favoured the successful bidder “with reasonable certainty”. A financial correction of up to €11.8 million was proposed, to be paid by the municipalities.
The demands
What we are demanding without delay:
– Immediate criminal prosecutions of everyone responsible for breach of trust against the State — a felony carrying a prison sentence of at least ten years when the damage exceeds €120,000 — as well as for breach of duty, making false statements and forgery.
– Arrest warrants for those responsible and summonses for them to answer questions, rather than more “preliminary investigations” kicked into the long grass, with “findings on unspecified matters” and under the surveillance of “Predator”.
– Urgent investigations and seizures, starting with the Athens Medical Association, which Mr Patoulis heads again today and which holds all the contract records.
– The lifting of bank secrecy and the tracing of every euro to its final recipient, together with checks on declarations of assets.
– The freezing of assets and the recovery of every euro paid without proof, with the intervention of the Authority for the Prevention of Money Laundering, headed by retired Supreme Court Deputy Prosecutor Georgios Vourliotis.
– The European Public Prosecutor’s Office to take charge of all matters involving EU funds, and the Court of Audit to order those responsible for the damage to repay the sums immediately.
– The ministers to tell Parliament, as a matter of urgency, what they have done throughout this period.
– An investigation into EDSNA’s current administration as well, in relation to findings concerning 2024.