The Hellenic Republic set Development Fund (HRADF) sold four out of the 12 properties in the historic Plaka district at the foot of the Acropolis at very low prices reports newspaper Kathimerini. The properties sold were never advertised by the HRADF. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg concerning bad management of the Ministry of Culture’s real estate.

The Culture Ministry owns a number of buildings in Athens but still ends up overpaying rent to house its office while renting its own buildings for as low as 15 euros per month. One example of this is on the island of Rhodes where the Ministry of Culture acted as though it did not know the value of its own property as most of it either remained unused or put in arbitrary use while in 2012, the Ministry paid 1.8 million euros in rent to house its offices.

A large number of properties are being neglected and on the verge of collapse, while others are being squatted by homeless people.

In more extreme cases, the ancient theater of Milos was registered as being of “unknown owner”.

The Archaeological Land Registry lists 7,500 properties belonging to the Ministry of Culture making it one of the richest ministries of Greece.