In the past days, newspaper reports spoke of a police discovery that in the house of two persons who are accused of other crimes, a huge sum, amounting to at least a hundred thousand euros, was found. Then the discovery: At least one of these two persons had been registering for social assistance.

Understandably, all these revelations must be weighed and investigated further for any ramifications possible, but so far as we are aware, no investigation, or inquiry, has been launched as regards the social assistance angle. We insist this is an angle that must not be neglected.

A simple line of inquiry would be to see where this person obtained social assistance from, on what grounds, whether any background check was carried out to establish that what was being claimed for was the truth, whether any lifestyle checks were carried out, etc. A widened line of inquiry would look at the whole list of people certified by that office as being in need of social assistance, whether what was claimed for was what was really and truly justified, whether any background and lifestyle checks are carried out, whether there is any undue, that is political, interference by any side on the assigning of social assistance, etc.

This is not intended to raise any persecution against the weaker sections of society or to blame the poor and the needy for the ills of society. But the social welfare budget is one of the highest in the national budget and it is the one that is most at the mercy of fraudsters as the other two big spending sections of the budget – education and health – are not so much subject to the subjective decision of the person in the office, many times left mostly alone or in an office of two or three persons, unprotected, and surrounded by sharks of all sorts.

The other areas of inquiry are all parts of the police and judicial inquiry, but this inquiry we are asking for is an administrative inquiry and should be public. No calls, as we recall, have been made following these revelations, which is surprising given that we all tend to comment on the slightest bit of news that happens, and also not surprising at all seeing we are in a pre-electoral period and no party wants to be portrayed as the Scrooge that would withdraw social assistance from the poor and the needy.

Considering the times we are living in, considering that it is such laxity that set Greece on the slope to the situation it now finds itself in, one would have thought public outrage would have asked vociferously for an inquiry and for any misdeeds to be adequately punished. But it would seem that public opinion has become so inured to the fact that social fraud is widespread that most readers of the above news just shrugged and got on with their lives. Or even that the complicity in this regard is so widespread that no one dares point at the evident fact that such social fraud detracts from our national economy, just as the equally widespread avoidance of VAT is lethal to the national economy.

One also understands that the political masters of the department in question now have other priorities and being strict on social assistance is the farthest from their minds, but one would have expected the department itself to have conducted its own inquiry by now. All we ask for is for this inquiry to be made public and its conclusions to be made public as soon as possible, so that public opinion can be satisfied that there is an ongoing and ever-present defender of public money.