The Kourmentza email to staff, the role of Galanis, and their controversial past in the wiretapping affair
An email sent by Mrs. Stavroula Kourmentza, Director of Technical Inspections at OPEKEPE, on October 8, and revealed today by Bankingnews, exposes the chaos and arbitrariness reigning within the organization. These practices have led to the non-payment of farmers, both those with and without findings — assuming, of course, that the 2024 payment (which should have been completed in June) ever happens at all.
And all this while OPEKEPE boasts of having made its first payment under the new transitional administration, supposedly using “best practices” in line with EU regulations and the National Regulatory Framework, claiming that all required administrative, cross, and on-site checks have been completed — supposedly marking the beginning of a “new operational era” for the organization.
Obviously, this is a mockery, since the email from Mrs. Kourmentza shows something entirely different.
It clearly demonstrates that some farmers will not be paid — not because violations were found, but because there are pending complaints, while others will also go unpaid even if only penalties (that should normally just be deducted from their payments) apply.
With such practices, it remains unknown when — or if — farmers without violations will ever be paid, since there is no clear timeframe for when the 2024 payments will run again.
As any reasonable observer can see from the document, the incompetence within OPEKEPE — particularly among individuals allegedly linked to the wiretapping scandal — is more than evident.
Equally obvious is the question: who can guarantee that, once again, taxpayer identification numbers (AFMs) won’t be tampered with during payment processing?
Bankingnews presents the full email sent by Mrs. Kourmentza, decoded paragraph by paragraph, with key sections emphasized:
Subject: Restrictions from October Payments for EAE AF2024
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2025, 16:10:24 +0300
“Please, by tomorrow Wednesday 08/10/2025 at 14:00, send to Mr. Galanis’s email, according to the attached Excel file:
The Excel contains all the payment schemes scheduled for the upcoming October payment.
Below are instructions regarding the AFMs that must be restricted in view of the payment.
AFMs of producers that must be blocked from all, or specific, subsidy schemes — marking ‘1’ in the corresponding column — due to an ongoing inspection (special, complaint-based, on-site, administrative, etc.) with findings that have not yet been entered.”
This sentence means that the 2024 inspection results have still not been recorded, even though the year has long passed. It is now October 13, 2025, and these checks — relating to last year’s applications — are still pending.
In more detail:
1. From those who have been inspected, list the ones with findings that must be restricted from payment.
From those who have been inspected, list the ones with findings that must be restricted from payment.
Normally, the process should include entering inspection results and integrating them into payment calculations.
However, as it seems, the checks are still unrecorded, and OPEKEPE intends to block those producers from payment altogether.
2. If you have already sent some restrictions in the previous submission of June, you must resend them if they are to remain restricted.
So, from June to October, what exactly did Mrs. Kourmentza, Director of Technical Inspections, do? Did she never wonder what happened to those pending checks?
3. Send the AFMs from complaints 10014 and 14212 that have findings or have not yet been checked.
Now OPEKEPE blocks AFMs based on complaints — the times are indeed changing.
4. The inspection in Zoniana, Crete, must be recorded among the restrictions by the Regional Directorate of Crete for those with findings or those not yet inspected.
Do you remember that inspection — the one where animals were being moved back and forth, and half the local community’s names appeared in the investigation transcripts?
Well, that inspection still isn’t finished. They are still “cooking” it.
5. Send the AFMs of beneficiaries involved in administrative inspections of previous years, which have been completed recently and whose results have either been entered into the OPS without triggering cross-checks, or have not been entered at all, according to the email of 26/3/2025, 5:42 p.m., subject:
‘EXTREMELY URGENT: RESULTS OF ADMINISTRATIVE INSPECTIONS,’ as you did for the June payment.
The email doesn’t specify which previous years it refers to — but it would be very interesting if OPEKEPE is now reviewing years 2019–2024, just like the European Public Prosecutor’s Office!
6. Send AFMs that you haven’t checked yet or have findings from administrative verifications (card slips, deliveries) under the corresponding scheme, excluding AFMs from prefectures that are paid without deliveries, according to Ministerial Decision 90998 / Government Gazette B 1741 / 09.04.2025, Article 1, regarding the relevant derogation.
These refer to the linked support payments for 2024, and it’s now 2025 — yet they still haven’t been checked!
7. By Friday, 10.10.2025 at 12:00, complete the entry of all possible Form G records.
Finally, we inform you that regarding on-site sample checks,
all unchecked cases will be restricted.
Please, Mr. Galanis, include them in the final consolidated restriction file under the indication ‘not checked’.
In other words, a full year later, OPEKEPE still hasn’t completed its sample inspections. So when exactly do they plan to finish — in the next fiscal year?
If everything supposedly works so perfectly at OPEKEPE, and if Minister Tsiaras insists payments will proceed smoothly, why are AFMs being blocked for cases that haven’t even been checked yet?
Moreover, the Technical Inspections Directorate (DTE) will send additional restrictions to Mr. Galanis.
Mr. Galanis who allegedly arranged subsidies for Goggos, managed Fasoulas’s livestock, and worried that Rickert might find him out, while Goggos was supposed to have been paid already — and now he’s in charge of deciding which AFMs to block!
And Mrs. Kourmentza who, according to rumors, “corrects” applications for the price of a Hermès bag, and is said to plan opening a Citizen Service Center (KEP) just so she can have MPs at her disposal!
But, as the whispers go, all of this is happening to protect Kyriakos Babasidis, a close friend of Mrs. Kourmentza, with whom she was supposedly set to “conquer the world” — and, above all, to cover for Neuropublic, the technical consultant that launched the 2024 OSDE (Integrated Administration and Control System - IACS) using a broken-down system and maps from 2012.
The real question is: what does Agriculture Minister Kostas Tsiaras actually know about all this — given that OPEKEPE has been under supervision since 2024 — and has the transitional President of OPEKEPE realized that he’s been misled into believing that “everything is running like clockwork”?
www.bankingnews.gr
And all this while OPEKEPE boasts of having made its first payment under the new transitional administration, supposedly using “best practices” in line with EU regulations and the National Regulatory Framework, claiming that all required administrative, cross, and on-site checks have been completed — supposedly marking the beginning of a “new operational era” for the organization.
Obviously, this is a mockery, since the email from Mrs. Kourmentza shows something entirely different.
It clearly demonstrates that some farmers will not be paid — not because violations were found, but because there are pending complaints, while others will also go unpaid even if only penalties (that should normally just be deducted from their payments) apply.
With such practices, it remains unknown when — or if — farmers without violations will ever be paid, since there is no clear timeframe for when the 2024 payments will run again.
As any reasonable observer can see from the document, the incompetence within OPEKEPE — particularly among individuals allegedly linked to the wiretapping scandal — is more than evident.
Equally obvious is the question: who can guarantee that, once again, taxpayer identification numbers (AFMs) won’t be tampered with during payment processing?
Bankingnews presents the full email sent by Mrs. Kourmentza, decoded paragraph by paragraph, with key sections emphasized:
Subject: Restrictions from October Payments for EAE AF2024
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2025, 16:10:24 +0300
“Please, by tomorrow Wednesday 08/10/2025 at 14:00, send to Mr. Galanis’s email, according to the attached Excel file:
The Excel contains all the payment schemes scheduled for the upcoming October payment.
Below are instructions regarding the AFMs that must be restricted in view of the payment.
AFMs of producers that must be blocked from all, or specific, subsidy schemes — marking ‘1’ in the corresponding column — due to an ongoing inspection (special, complaint-based, on-site, administrative, etc.) with findings that have not yet been entered.”
This sentence means that the 2024 inspection results have still not been recorded, even though the year has long passed. It is now October 13, 2025, and these checks — relating to last year’s applications — are still pending.
In more detail:
1. From those who have been inspected, list the ones with findings that must be restricted from payment.
From those who have been inspected, list the ones with findings that must be restricted from payment.
Normally, the process should include entering inspection results and integrating them into payment calculations.
However, as it seems, the checks are still unrecorded, and OPEKEPE intends to block those producers from payment altogether.
2. If you have already sent some restrictions in the previous submission of June, you must resend them if they are to remain restricted.
So, from June to October, what exactly did Mrs. Kourmentza, Director of Technical Inspections, do? Did she never wonder what happened to those pending checks?
3. Send the AFMs from complaints 10014 and 14212 that have findings or have not yet been checked.
Now OPEKEPE blocks AFMs based on complaints — the times are indeed changing.
4. The inspection in Zoniana, Crete, must be recorded among the restrictions by the Regional Directorate of Crete for those with findings or those not yet inspected.
Do you remember that inspection — the one where animals were being moved back and forth, and half the local community’s names appeared in the investigation transcripts?
Well, that inspection still isn’t finished. They are still “cooking” it.
5. Send the AFMs of beneficiaries involved in administrative inspections of previous years, which have been completed recently and whose results have either been entered into the OPS without triggering cross-checks, or have not been entered at all, according to the email of 26/3/2025, 5:42 p.m., subject:
‘EXTREMELY URGENT: RESULTS OF ADMINISTRATIVE INSPECTIONS,’ as you did for the June payment.
The email doesn’t specify which previous years it refers to — but it would be very interesting if OPEKEPE is now reviewing years 2019–2024, just like the European Public Prosecutor’s Office!
6. Send AFMs that you haven’t checked yet or have findings from administrative verifications (card slips, deliveries) under the corresponding scheme, excluding AFMs from prefectures that are paid without deliveries, according to Ministerial Decision 90998 / Government Gazette B 1741 / 09.04.2025, Article 1, regarding the relevant derogation.
These refer to the linked support payments for 2024, and it’s now 2025 — yet they still haven’t been checked!
7. By Friday, 10.10.2025 at 12:00, complete the entry of all possible Form G records.
Finally, we inform you that regarding on-site sample checks,
all unchecked cases will be restricted.
Please, Mr. Galanis, include them in the final consolidated restriction file under the indication ‘not checked’.
In other words, a full year later, OPEKEPE still hasn’t completed its sample inspections. So when exactly do they plan to finish — in the next fiscal year?
If everything supposedly works so perfectly at OPEKEPE, and if Minister Tsiaras insists payments will proceed smoothly, why are AFMs being blocked for cases that haven’t even been checked yet?
Moreover, the Technical Inspections Directorate (DTE) will send additional restrictions to Mr. Galanis.
Mr. Galanis who allegedly arranged subsidies for Goggos, managed Fasoulas’s livestock, and worried that Rickert might find him out, while Goggos was supposed to have been paid already — and now he’s in charge of deciding which AFMs to block!
And Mrs. Kourmentza who, according to rumors, “corrects” applications for the price of a Hermès bag, and is said to plan opening a Citizen Service Center (KEP) just so she can have MPs at her disposal!
But, as the whispers go, all of this is happening to protect Kyriakos Babasidis, a close friend of Mrs. Kourmentza, with whom she was supposedly set to “conquer the world” — and, above all, to cover for Neuropublic, the technical consultant that launched the 2024 OSDE (Integrated Administration and Control System - IACS) using a broken-down system and maps from 2012.
The real question is: what does Agriculture Minister Kostas Tsiaras actually know about all this — given that OPEKEPE has been under supervision since 2024 — and has the transitional President of OPEKEPE realized that he’s been misled into believing that “everything is running like clockwork”?
www.bankingnews.gr
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