Jew World Order

The surprisingly high prevalence was the result of authorities on the island
permitting fraudulent claims for more than a decade.

“I realised when I became mayor that a lot of illegal things were taking
place here,” said Mr Bozikis, a lawyer who was elected last year. “I
promised myself that I would tackle them, irrespective of the political cost.”

The fake blind were raking in monthly payments of at least €350, sometimes
more depending on their age and family status. Those who supposedly needed
carers received larger sums.

The mayor, a member of the Socialist Pasok party, has suspended all benefit
payments until it can be independently established exactly who needs a white
cane.

The crackdown has encountered huge opposition, culminating in a recent council
meeting which was stormed by around 50 angry benefit claimants, who chucked
eggs and pots of yoghurt at the mayor in a uniquely Greek expression of
anger.

“I consider it a badge of honour,” said the mayor, sitting at his
desk beneath an Orthodox image of St Dionysios, the patron saint of the
island, which lies south of Corfu. “It meant that we are doing the
right thing.”

Known to the Venetians during the heyday of their trading empire as “the
Flower of the Levant”, Zakynthos has now been mockingly dubbed “the
Island of the Blind” by the Greek media.

Mr Bozikis’s crusade against graft is a microcosm of the immense problems of
corruption, tax evasion and benefit fraud that Greece confronts as it tries
to avoid being kicked out of the euro zone.

It is a scourge that whoever wins the country’s general election – one of the
most crucial in its post-war history – next Sunday will come under huge
pressure to tackle, from the European Union and the International Monetary
Fund, Greece’s creditors. Yet the signs are that anti-austerity parties
which oppose the clampdown on public spending are gaining in the polls.

At least 10 parties are expected to win seats under the country’s electoral
system and the likelihood is that, to keep Greece on track and deliver the
further cuts needed over the next two years, the two traditional rival
parties, New Democracy and Pasok, will be forced into coalition.

Fraudulent benefit claims, including bogus cases of leprosy, cost Greece €111
million last year, according to government statistics.

Nearly one in six disability allowances were found to be fraudulent after an
investigation by the health ministry, and last week the labour ministry
announced that benefits had been stopped to 200,000 people who either lied
to get their cheques or were long since dead.

There have been cases of multiple maternity benefit payments to women who have
never had children.

The phenomenon of hundreds of fake blind people on Zakynthos could be the
result of a typically Greek system of kickbacks and corrupt political
patronage. The mayor claimed it was the head ophthalmologist at the local
hospital, Nikolaos Vartzelis, who falsely diagnosed people as blind in
exchange for money.

Their claims were allegedly signed off by Dionysios Gasparos, then the
governor of the island, in exchange for votes.

Both men have denied the allegations but are being investigated by the health
ministry.

Dr Vartzelis, who stepped down from his post last month, said he had been “lenient,
but within the limits of the law” towards people who “didn’t have
bread to eat” and desperately needed extra income.

He accused the mayor of playing “political games” by levelling the
accusations against him, in an attempt to undermine Mr Gasparos, who is
running as a candidate for the conservative New Democracy party next weekend.

Dr Vartzelis conceded that he had signed some blind disability applications
but said others had been approved by an unnamed second opthalmologist on the
island.

Mr Gasparos blamed the doctor for the scandal. “I have nothing to do with
this. It’s not me who registers you as blind, it’s the ophthalmologist,”
he said.

A 35-year-old taxi driver who pretended to be blind to draw a monthly
disability allowance “bragged” about his ability to cheat the
welfare system, according to a taxi-driver colleague. “He was bragging
about it around the island,” said Yianni, 33, a who declined to give
his surname.

“But now that they’ve all been found out, he hasn’t been since – he’s
hiding at home. It’s very awkward for his parents. It wasn’t right but if
someone offers you that money, you’d be silly not to take it.”

No one has been more angered than the island’s 40 or so genuinely blind
people. “What makes me really, really mad is that I am blind and these
people are laughing in my face by taking disability allowances,” said
John Venardos, 50, who began to go blind a decade ago as a result of a
genetic trait that runs in his family.

Mr Venardos, who does his best to run a family-owned hotel on the beach
despite the loss of his sight, said the scam was symptomatic of the venality
and corruption which have eaten away at Greece like a cancer. “People
think ‘Why should my next door get false benefit payments and not me?’
Corruption starts at the top – government ministers are doing it, mayors do
it, they all screw the system.”

Born in Canada but now settled on Zakynthos, he said the scam had brought
shame and embarrassment to the island. “They are calling us ‘the island
of the blind’. When I go to Athens I’m afraid to say I’m from Zakynthos and
walk down the street with a white stick because people will say I’m faking
it.”

His 75-year-old father, Nikolaos Venardos, is also suffering from the genetic
disorder – he started to lose his sight a few years ago and is now 85 per
cent blind. “I feel embarrassed to be Greek. Seven hundred blind people
on a tiny island like this? Come on, it’s ridiculous. I deserve my benefit
payments, but those people are driving cars and leading normal lives,”
he said.

The scandal on Zakynthos – which the mayor estimates has cost the island €2
million a year for the last decade – represents just a fraction of the
abuses which are rampant across Greece.

Tax evasion is endemic, the awarding of public contracts is often corrupt, and
the practise of offering “fakelaki” – which translates literally
as “little envelope” but in reality means a bribe – is widespread.

Together they have conspired to drag down the Greek economy, now in its fifth
consecutive year of deep recession.

Greece was ranked 80th out of 183 countries in Transparency International’s
2011 corruption perceptions index, below countries like Cuba, Tunisia, China
and Saudi Arabia. In the European Union, only Bulgaria ranked lower.

“The long-standing acceptance of corruption, and fatalism about the
chances of preventing or resisting it, drives petty wrongdoing,” the
anti-corruption watchdog said in its most recent report on Greece. “When
people believe that their leaders and officials exploit their authority with
impunity, they are more likely to act along similar lines in their own lives.”

Sixty per cent of Greeks expect public officials to abuse their position for
financial gain, said Transparency International.

“There needs to be a wholesale clean up of the system in Greece, rather
than chipping away at bits and pieces here and there,” said Chara
Xyrogiannopoulou, 55, in her waterfront bar in Zakynthos Town.

“I’m not sure how successful the mayor will be,” said Nikos
Stamiris, 52, serving tsatsiki and roast lamb at his taverna in a square
lined with lemon trees and palms. “Others tried to do the same but in
the end just gave up.”

“The problem is not that people are crooks, it’s that the whole system is
sick,” said Spiros Skiadopoulos, 63, a businessman from Zakynthos who
runs a photography college in Athens.

“Everybody is corrupt in Greece – the lawyers, the doctors, the judicial
system, police, customs – everybody. Why are our European partners now so
surprised by this? They knew all along, right from when they allowed Greece
into the EU.

“We need to change our whole mentality. The Germans and everyone else
need to come here and be aggressive in making us change. If they think we
are the devil of Europe, they must throw us out.”

It is a stark choice that the mayor, too, believes Greece faces as it teeters
on the edge of economic oblivion and social chaos.

“Greece can change but only if the politicians in Athens start to change
and to set a good example,” said Mr Bozikis.

“There are two Greeces at the moment – one that wants to stick with the
old system of backhanders and corruption, and one that wants to move
forward. To do the latter, we need to change everything.”