While the Prosecutor’s Office of the Supreme Court has since late last October forwarded to Parliament the file on the case of the five “ghost” naval cooperation aircraft Navy’s P-3B Orion and the $500 million scandal over the awarding of their upgrade to Lockheed, under SYRIZA-ANEL, the Financial Prosecutor’s Office has already launched a preliminary investigation.

The scandal of the five P-3B Orion aircraft, which have been sitting idle – with all that implies – for nine years at the facilities of Hellenic Aircraft Industry in Tanagra and Air Base of Elefsina has again come to light, as revealed by “THEMA” (25.8.2024 and 29.9.2024). It came into the public domain after a lawsuit filed with the prosecutor of the Supreme Court Georgia Adilini last August by retired naval officer Panagiotis Stamatis.

The lawsuit is directed “against every participant and involved, with common action and common malice, competent official and extra-institutional accomplice or instigator, and against every other person against whom there are strong indications of guilt for the felonious criminal acts of: a) Disloyalty, b) Bribery of officials and c) Money laundering from criminal activities.”

The timeline

Note that Lockheed Martin had committed to completing the aircraft upgrade by 2020, but there have been constant extensions. To date, the delivery has not materialized, even though the last installment of $500 million was paid on September 15, 2020.

On 8.5.2019, with a delay and while our country had paid $406 million by then, it was announced that the delivery of the first 2 upgraded aircraft was imminent in the second quarter of 2022 and the remaining 2 in the second and fourth quarters of 2023.

On 9.9.2019, Lockheed Vice President Denis Plessas announced from Thessaloniki that the first modernized P-3B Orion will be delivered in 2021. The clock was ticking and on Dec. 18, 2023, during the Egypt Defense Expo, it was announced that the first P-3B had completed ground testing and would be delivered to the Navy at the end of 2023, while the second was expected to be delivered in 2024, followed by two more in 2025. To clarify, the original schedule at the time the contract was signed (2015) called for delivery of the first aircraft in 2019 and the next three in 2020 and 2022.

Stamatis’ testimony

The head of the Financial Prosecutor’s Office, Appeals Prosecutor Panagiotis Kapsimalis, after sending the complaint to Ms Adilini for transmission to the Parliament, instructed the Financial Prosecutor of the Appeals Court, Dionisia Papadopoulou, to conduct a preliminary investigation. In this context, according to information from ‘THEMATOS’, Mr. Stamatis was called and testified. The plaintiff, in addition to the other evidence he testified, reportedly stated that “the most credulous citizen can conclude the paradox, if not the reprehensible, that while theSupreme Naval Council in 2009 ruled that the P-3Bs were unsuitable and dangerous for any use, yet another Supreme Naval Council came along after four years of the aircraft being idle and decided to modernize them.”

Thus, the retired Navy officer allegedly pointed out to the financial prosecutor that, without any doubt, the KYSA on the recommendation of the Navy, decided in 2015 to pay $500 million to restore the P-3B Orion to flying condition, which in that year (2015) was almost 55 years old, having been built in 1960.

The plaintiff also allegedly pointed to the speech of the then Secretary of Defense Evangelos Apostolakis (17.5.2019) at the ceremony of handing over a P-3B Orion for testing at the EAB facility, in which he had said: “It is a great pleasure for me to attend the ceremony of delivery to the Navy of the P-3B Interim Solution Naval Cooperation Aircraft. This is the first step in the important modernization program for these P-3B aircraft. My joy today is twofold, as I am pleased to see the first fruits of an important effort that began during my tenure as Chief of Naval Operations.”

He reportedly said that Lockheed had warned in a letter that the P-3B rebuild would cost the Greek government more than other solutions. But the KISEA, and in stark contrast to Lockheed’s positions, decided to approve the draft intergovernmental Letter of Acceptance (LOA) at the Greek government’s expense.