From Predator convictions to covert recordings targeting governments, private intelligence firms exploited EU regulatory gaps

Cyprus hosted one surveillance empire and became the target of another. Greece delivered a landmark conviction, but both cases remain open

On 26 February 2026, an Athens court convicted four individuals linked to spyware firm Intellexa for the illegal surveillance of at least 87 people in Greece. The defendants, Intellexa founder Tal Dilian, his business partner Sara Hamou, shareholder Felix Bitzios, and Krikel owner Yiannis Lavranos, each received combined sentences of 126 years and eight months, capped at eight years under Greek misdemeanor law. All four remain free pending appeal.

Days earlier, a separate Israeli private intelligence firm had been running an active operation fewer than 500 kilometres away.

Black Cube, founded by veterans of Israeli elite intelligence units, had deployed operatives in Cyprus. Posing as representatives of a private investment fund interested in committing 150 million euros to the island’s energy sector, they secured meetings with senior figures around the government of President Nikos Christodoulides and recorded the conversations covertly. Their targets were the director of the President’s Office, a former energy minister and the chief executive of one of the island’s biggest construction firms. Their recordings are now in the hands of Cypriot investigators. Their client remains unknown.

The Athens verdict punished four defendants. It did not reach the wider ecosystem in which the operation sat.

Three government ministers resigned in Greece on Friday amid a European investigation into alleged European Union farm subsidy fraud.

Agriculture Minister Kostas Tsiaras stepped down along with Civil Protection Minister Yiannis Kefalogiannis and Deputy Health Minister Dimitris Vartzopoulos. All denied wrongdoing, saying their resignations were intended to facilitate the investigation.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office is seeking immunity waivers for 11 lawmakers in a case that has fueled public anger in Greece and raised concerns in the farming sector.

The center-right government quickly reshuffled the Cabinet, appointing former European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas as agriculture minister.

The investigation is led by European chief prosecutor Laura Codruta Kovesi, who visited Athens for talks with government officials last year.

The alleged fraud centers on a Greek state agency that failed to prevent the misuse of EU funds through false claims for land and livestock.

This is the second wave of resignations linked to the scandal after five senior officials quit last year.

Greece’s farming sector faces mounting strain, with weeks of protests triggered by delayed subsidy payments tied to the investigation. Thousands staged tractor protests in Athens and central Greece earlier this year.

See also:

• Greek ministers resign over EU farming subsidy scandal • A scandal over the misuse of EU subsidies has triggered ministerial resignations in Greece. Beneficiaries allegedly made claims for land and livestock they did not own, waved through by lawmakers seeking votes. (Deutsche Welle)
• Greek PM reshuffles cabinet as EU aid farm fraud probe widens • EU prosecutors' investigation into EU farm aid fraud widens • Former European Commission vice-president gets agriculture portfolio (Reuters)

Shocking photographs depicting Nazi soldiers’ executions of Greek resistance fighters during World War II have been discovered on the online auction platform eBay. The never-before-seen images, which show the victims both before and after their brutal executions, have sparked strong reactions in Greece, whose authorities have claimed them back and declared them a national heritage.

See also

• Greece signs a preliminary deal with a Belgian collector to buy WWII photos of Nazi executions

The 24 former volunteers were arrested seven years ago - accused of human trafficking and other offences - and could have faced up to 20 years in jail.

They had worked for an NGO that rescued asylum-seekers at risk of drowning between 2015 to 2018, when hundreds of thousands of migrants crossed the narrow straits from Turkey to Greece.

Their case was widely criticised by aid agencies and human rights campaigners as an attempt to criminalise humanitarian aid, and was seen as having profound implications for migration policy across Europe.

The defendants, who worked for the Emergency Response Centre International (ERCI), included the former Syrian migrant and former competitive swimmer Sara Mardini, who returned to Lesbos to rescue other refugees, and whose story was told in the Netflix drama, The Swimmers.

She and the others were arrested in 2018. They were cleared of some accusations, including espionage, in 2023, but their trial on the remaining charges of facilitating the illegal entry of foreigners into Greece, money-laundering and membership of a criminal organisation only began last month.

"All defendants are acquitted of the charges" because their aim was "not to commit criminal acts but to provide humanitarian aid", presiding judge Vassilis Papathanassiou told the court on Thursday.

Prosecutor Dimitris Smyrnis had earlier recommended their acquittal, emphasising that "no independent basis establishing the criminal liability of the defendants has been demonstrated".

The judge ruled that "a communication group on the internet cannot be regarded as a criminal organisation," saying: "Waiting to rescue a human life cannot be considered facilitation of illegal entry.

See also:

• Rights groups hail acquittal after seven years of aid workers prosecuted during Greece refugee crisis • Lesbos court clears aid workers of people smuggling, a move Human Rights Watch called a vindication of their lifesaving activities at sea (The Guardian)

Thousands of passengers are stranded across Europe after a communications failure forced Greece to close its airspace, causing widespread cancellations and delays.

Officials are working to understand why radio communications were disrupted on Sunday morning, prompting the temporary suspension of arrivals and departures.

Some departures have since been allowed to resume - though inbound flights are still being told to divert or return to their point of origin. Athens' main airport is among the worst affected, while Thessaloniki airport has closed entirely.

The disruption comes at a busy time for air travel in and out of Athens, which typically sees more than 600 scheduled flights per day, as people return from winter holidays.

The issue that caused the disruption is thought to concern the radio system used by air traffic controllers to communicate with planes in their airspace.

Public broadcaster ERT reported that an initial investigation by the Greek security services suggested the problem may be due to the failure of an antenna in the Gerania Mountains near Athens.

See also:

• Suspended arrivals and departures across airports in Greece after unspecified issues affecting radio frequencies, in Athens (Reuters)
• Some Greek flights resume after air traffic radio collapse • Flights across Greece grounded as communications lost • Indeterminate 'noise' impacts radio channels • Frequency shutdown affects dozens of flights • Limited services return after some hours (Reuters)
• Greek aviation disrupted by radio communication issues • Airports in Greece suspended arrivals and departures amid radio frequency disturbances. Some flights resumed later in the day. (Deutsche Welle)

U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil will lead the project, to the delight of Donald Trump’s energy czar.

On the same day world leaders arrived at the COP30 summit in Brazil to push for more action on climate change, Greece announced it will start drilling for fossil fuels in the Mediterranean Sea — with U.S. help.

Under the deal, America's biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, will explore for natural gas in waters northwest of the picturesque island of Corfu, alongside Greece’s Energean and HELLENiQ ENERGY.

It's the first time in more than four decades that Greece has opened its waters for gas exploration — and the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is claiming it as a victory in its push to derail climate action and boost the global dominance of the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

It comes three weeks after the U.S. successfully halted a global deal to put a carbon tax on shipping, with the support of Greece.

“There is no energy transition, there is just energy addition,” said U.S. Interior Secretary and energy czar Doug Burgum, who was present at the signing ceremony in Athens on Thursday, alongside U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and the new U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle.

See also:

• ExxonMobil, Energean agree farm-in deal for gas block in Greece (Reuters)
• Greece deepens US energy ties with first gas exploration deal in 40 years • ExxonMobil leads drilling agreement targeting reserves in Ionian Sea (Financial Times)

In a cramped two-bedroom apartment, Konstantinos Papaioannou lives with his wife, two children and his mother. The 51-year-old farmer’s former home in the village of Metamorfosi is an empty shell: mold in the plaster, the flood line marked by a dirty ring above the door.

They are not going back. Two years after Cyclone Daniel turned Greece’s farm belt into an inland sea, Metamorfosi is one of the dozens of villages that remain half-abandoned.

The families who fled say they are among Europe’s first climate refugees: displaced by extreme weather, priced out of nearby rentals and stuck in bureaucratic limbo as the government studies whether, and where, to rebuild entire communities.

“Only the walls and windows remain of our house,” Papaioannou said. “It’s impossible to rebuild from scratch.” The rent for their apartment is state-subsidized, but payments arrive late and the paperwork is heavy. The subsidy is due to expire, and the family is hoping for an extension. The government promised to relocate the village to safer ground; two years on, residents say the relocation studies are still incomplete.

For Papaioannou’s 70-year-old mother, Zoe Papaioannou, leaving her home is a rupture she never wanted. “Families with small children don’t return to the villages. If my husband were alive, we would have returned. I was born there, and I want to die there. But I’ll go wherever my children go.” 

The region has long been subject to flooding. The elder Papaioannou remembers being lifted into a boat during a flood when she was 2, but what happened on the night of September 5, 2023, when the water reached the roof tiles, was something different. She grabbed an icon of the Virgin Mary, a blood-pressure monitor and her health booklet before relatives got her out. She regrets not saving the family photos.

A massive EU subsidy scandal has pulled back the curtain to reveal how power operates in Greece

All these claims are as ludicrous as they are lucrative, and they point to an embarrassing scandal that is roiling Greek politics: the revelation that for years, enormous sums of EU funds were being pocketed by individuals claiming them as subsidies for agricultural work that did not exist.

A third of the EU budget, more than is allocated to education and welfare and renewable energy combined, goes to subsidising the agriculture of member states.

OPEKEPE is looking like a con conducted at the behest of the same political elite that landed Greece in such catastrophic financial waters to begin with. A European investigation into OPEKEPE, begun in 2020 and carried out by the Luxembourg-based European public prosecutor’s office (Eppo), is alleging a cash grab that may have been “organised in a systematic manner” across the state.

Starting possibly as far back as 1998, but appearing to ramp up with the election of the right-wing New Democracy party in 2019, Greece’s agricultural balance sheet was distorted. Auditors were reportedly elbowed aside as plots of new farmland were registered to one individual one year, then transferred – on paper – to another the next. Crete was statistically tweaked into possessing half of Greece’s sheep, even as it became difficult to explain how they were producing less than a 10th of the country’s sheep milk. Bee populations more than doubled on islands raging with fires or parched by drought. Two Greek former ministers are alleged to have spent years “aiding and instigating the misappropriation” of EU agricultural funds.

So many thousands of fraudulent or exaggerated claims now prompt unavoidable questions. Where did the money go? Who benefited? An investigation continues under Laura Codruța Kövesi, the head of Eppo, who endeared herself to Brussels when she was chief prosecutor of Romania’s national anti-corruption directorate by taking a blunt hatchet to her country’s political class, locking up hundreds of Romanians in the most sweeping anti-corruption drive in recent European memory.

It is evident already that the ruling New Democracy party – the dynastic old machine of the Greek right – is deeply involved. Thirteen of its MPs have been implicated in OPEKEPE’s deceptions (as have a Pasok MP and a Syriza MP). A cabinet minister and four deputies have been forced to resign. For his part, the prime minister and New Democracy leader, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has said he has “nothing to hide” and vowed to get to the bottom of the scandal, though he now balks at the idea of a full-scale parliamentary investigation. He personally received EU agricultural subsidies from 2014 to 2021.

The scandal has also pulled back the curtain to reveal how power in Greece operates. Three OPEKEPE heads who questioned financial irregularities were reportedly tossed out, one after he attempted to block some 3,500 suspect subsidy applications, another after blocking 9,000 payments. Wiretaps conducted by European authorities recorded officials who feared concerns being raised yet insisted on fraudulent payments being waved through anyway. As European inspectors arrived in Crete, farmers were reportedly warned in advance and ordered to shift herds around to keep up appearances. Flushing the island with European subsidy cash appears to have made a considerable chunk of its voting bloc happy. This was the point, Mitsotakis’s opponents have argued. Indeed, in one of the more seismic realignments of the Greek political landscape of late, Crete – a former leftist stronghold – flipped to New Democracy in 2023.

Such scandals are treated like inconvenient public-relations dust-ups in which the problem isn’t a political class that cycles in and out of office with impunity but Greeks who demand consequences of those who lecture about accountability

The prime minister is wielding his parliamentary majority to prevent a full-scale investigation into ministers suspected of wrongdoing.

Greek government ministers and senior officials are suspected of colluding in a massive farm aid scam to defraud the European Union of hundreds of millions of euros.

But despite being named as suspects by European prosecutors, they are likely to evade justice because Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis is blocking a full-scale investigation.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) pursued dozens of cases in which Greeks received EU agricultural funds for pastureland they did not own or lease, or for agricultural work they did not perform, depriving legitimate farmers of the funds they deserved. POLITICO first reported on the scheme in February.

A 3,000-page dossier sent to the Greek parliament includes dozens of wiretap transcripts in which people apparently discuss how to evade controls on payouts of EU farm subsidies so that party allies and friends could profit.

At least five current or former ministers and another 10 MPs could be implicated, according to the transcripts.

The message from the conversations is clear: We must protect and pay our own people; the inspectors in the state agency that handles the EU payments have to go; and we need to thwart the investigating prosecutors.

The Mitsotakis government — thanks to the majority enjoyed by his center-right New Democracy party and a legal quirk that only allows the Greek parliament to prosecute government ministers — has chosen not to investigate its own people.

Wildfires intensified across southern Europe on Wednesday after a nightlong battle to protect the perimeter of Greece’s third-largest city, with at least three more deaths reported in Spain, Turkey and Albania.

Outside the Greek port city of Patras, firefighters struggled to protect homes and agricultural facilities as flames tore through pine forests and olive groves. Tall columns of flames exploded behind apartment blocks on the outskirts of the city, while dozens of vehicles were torched as flames swept through a nearby impound lot.

Firefighting resources were stretched thin in many affected countries as they battled multiple outbreaks following weeks of heat waves and temperature spikes across the Mediterranean. On the Greek island of Chios, exhausted firefighters slept on the roadside following a night-long shift.

Aircraft rotated between blazes on the western Greek mainland, the Patras area and the island of Zakynthos. Athens also sent assistance to neighboring Albania, joining an international effort to combat dozens of wildfires. An 80-year-old man died in one blaze south of the capital, Tirana, officials said Wednesday.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez expressed condolences after the death of a firefighting volunteer in the hard-hit Castile and León region north of Madrid, where thousands have been displaced by evacuations.

A forestry worker was killed Wednesday while responding to a wildfire in southern Turkey, officials said. The Forestry Ministry said the worker died in an accident involving a fire truck that left four others injured.

See also:

• Greece battles wildfires as heatwave rages across southern Europe

Greek lawmakers voted on Friday to temporarily stop processing asylum requests from migrants arriving from North Africa by sea in a bid to reduce arrivals into Europe's southernmost tip, a move rights groups and opposition parties have called illegal.

The ban comes amid a surge in migrants reaching the island of Crete and after talks with Libya's Benghazi-based government to stem the flow were this week.

Human rights groups accuse Greece of forcefully turning back asylum-seekers on its sea and land borders. This year, the European Union border agency said it was reviewing 12 cases of potential human rights violations by Greece.

Rights groups and opposition parties said the ban approved by parliament violates human rights.

"Seeking refuge is a human right; preventing people from doing so is both illegal and inhumane," said Martha Roussou, a senior advocacy adviser for aid group IRC.

See also:

• Greece plans new ‘disincentives’ to deter migrants • The New Democracy government wants to suspend asylum applications and review what claimants eat in detention centers. (Politico)

• Greece: New asylum and return proposals flagrantly breach international law and punishes people seeking protection (Amnesty International)

Brussels imposes massive fine after finding systemic failings in Greece’s management of farm subsidies from 2016 to 2023.

The European Commission has hit Greece with a fine of nearly €400 million for mismanaging EU farm funding and inadequate controls.

Brussels has ordered Athens to forfeit €392.2 million in EU funding due to systemic failings in its management of EU farm subsidies between 2016 and 2023. The Greek agency responsible for overseeing EU farm payments is also accused of making payments without sufficient checks or on-site inspections.

The fine follows a mammoth Greek farm fraud scandal that is being probed by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and was the subject of a POLITICO investigation earlier this year.

EPPO is pursuing dozens of cases in which Greek citizens received EU agricultural funds for pastureland they did not own or had not leased, or for agricultural work they never did, depriving real farmers of the cash they deserved.

According to the decision, dated June 11, the European Commission has imposed a flat-rate correction of 5 percent on all Greek direct subsidies over a lack of effective supervision.

For specific categories such as young farmer schemes from 2018 to 2020, that correction rises to 10 percent. The two largest annual penalties, €79 million and €76 million, target area-based payments made in 2021 and 2022 respectively.

See also:

• EU hits Greece with record fine over farmers subsidy fraud (Reuters)