The government of Greek Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis has cancelled a land swap with the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos, after state prosecutors reported the Orthodox monastery had profited to the tune of £70 million from the deal.A series of financial and ethics scandals has hurt the conservative New Democracy (ND) Party government of Prime Minister Karamanlis, dropping his support in the polls below the opposition Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) for the first time since taking office in 2004.
Opposition deputies have charged the government with incompetence and corruption. On Oct 3 Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis said the government had issued an executive order annulling three land transactions, and backed the state prosecutor’s investigation of the land deal.
Beginning in 1999, the government recognized a claim to state land by the monastery. To compensate the 1000 year old skete, or hermit community, the government offered public land in other parts of Greece to the monastery---which it then sold for a profit.
Vatopedi is located on the north-eastern part of the Athos peninsula and ranks second in the hierarchy of the Mount Athos monasteries. It is coenobitic (communal) and is inhabited by 100 Greek and Russian monks.
Since the state prosecutor’s probe began, the government has frozen the monastery’s bank accounts and repossessed the land.
The head of the Greek Orthodox Church, Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens said he was shocked by the allegations of corrupt practices. He told the Greek press “I am astounded by everything that has been published and I have total faith in the justice system.” However, he could not intervene in the affair as Mount Athos was under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul.
The 20 monasteries on Mount Athos, a mountain on a peninsula land in Greek Macedonia on the Aegean accessible only by boat, is a self-governing monastic state within Greece.
Women are not permitted entrance to Mount Athos and only Orthodox men, 18 years of age or older are permitted to live on the “Holy Mountain.”
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(Source: RI)