The attempted scams identified on the Renovate-Home website were reported on Tuesday morning by the Minister for Families and Social Cohesion, Domna Michailidou, while announcing that in a week there will be a lottery for 1,000 euros to 8,500 beneficiaries of benefits with prepaid cards.

As he told ERT, in addition to the 3,700 applications that were normally pre-approved for the “Renovate” program, an advance was withdrawn for over 3,000 applications, of which 1,200 were in Ilia: “We saw something strange, that 1/3 of the program is concentrated in Ilia and we say what is happening there. Because fortunately we caught it and no public money was given for the time being no criminal offence was charged. The important thing is that since this is all digital data, the system remembers and there is memory for specific requests so we design programs but we also control them”.

In the same context, he referred to similar problems identified in applications for the Evros resettlement program with a 10,000 euro subsidy to anyone who wants to go to the municipalities in the region. “But we currently have around 700 applications and we can only approve two. All this time people who have always lived there or people who have always worked there have been coming and applying. I don’t know if it’s that there’s not a lot of interest or if it’s an intent to cannibalize money.”

On the new lottery to be held in a week, Ms Michaelidou explained that it is an additional incentive to use the prepaid cards through which the rewards are given. As he explained “if you use your card, you get one ticket for the 50% you use anyway, which you are required to have used electronically, and then for every 5% of purchases you make with that card you get another ticket to increase your chances in the draw. If they don’t want to participate in the draw, the platform has been opened for them to declare non-participation in the draw.”

Finally, the Minister of Family and Social Cohesion announced changes to the age of beneficiaries and income criteria, while 62% has already been absorbed for House 2 for 20,000 housing loans.