Another sentence within the sentence that I have already served – and with the above – for my participation in the Revolutionary Struggle organization, is the complete colonization of my life in economic terms and is imposed by the Authority for Combating the Legalization of Proceeds from Criminal Activities (from now on I will refer to it as the Authority), with measures that exceed all logic and their cost is unmanageable. I had published a text on this issue a few months ago, where I wrote how the Authority holds hostage for life the lives of all those convicted under Article 187A (“anti-terrorism”), as well as those suspected of “terrorism”, and freezes all their assets. I had written at the time that I understand their anxiety to control where an asset comes from, since they have us as easy targets to present a project (the abundant black money that is “recycled” within the state, through its contracts with businesses, within the bosom of big capital is not illegal), but it is impossible for me to accept that I must pay exorbitant amounts to the state for fines and legal costs (they have amounted to 35,000 euros and my total debts to 45,000 euros, including inheritance tax along with all surcharges), without being able to utilize the one and only inherited asset that I have to repay the debt. That is, they tell me that with a basic salary that I was receiving and an unemployment benefit that I am currently receiving, I will pay installments to the tax office that are close to 200 euros per month for twenty years, with the best possible arrangement that exists in the… universe and at the same time, my child and I will live with the 390 euros that will be left over. In my previous text, I wrote that if they do not let me utilize the inherited assets that I have, they will not take a single euro since there is nothing left over. The Authority responded to my last application in September 2025 that it approves the transfer to the tax office of the amounts of money that are in the bank accounts of my cousin – whom I have inherited – for the repayment of debts and rejected my request to utilize 1/4 of the amount that corresponds to me (1/4 of which the objective value just covers the said amount) from the inheritance. Only the amounts it releases to be transferred directly to the Tax Office do not exceed 11,000 euros. So the math doesn’t work. I have 34,000 euros left that must be repaid. Are they joking with my life? This “joke” has a purpose. It aims at absolute revenge through financial annihilation on a lifelong scale, for political reasons and with purely political motives. Because how else can the Authority and the chief prosecutor’s insistence be explained, to prohibit me from utilizing a property, at a time when any money will go to the state?
Especially, after a decision of the Authority telling me that I must proceed with the acceptance of an inheritance – which has a high financial cost – in order to be able to settle the issues, after I finally made the acceptance and proceeded with a new application to the Authority, it notified me that it prohibits the use of the assets. I mean, what did they want? To accept the inheritances without being able to use them to repay the debt. This is a brutal and direct predatory decision, but with what material return, since objectively, there is no monetary gain for the state? To have me held hostage for life with debts.
So I proceeded to appeal against the Authority’s decision regarding the prohibition to utilize 1/4 of the amount I inherited to repay the tax. The appeal was made to the Supreme Court, the only judicial body above the Authority, which has been determined for February 4.
The Authority is a public legal body established by Law 4557/2018, enjoys administrative and operational independence and was established to implement the decisions and conventions of the EU and the UN Security Council on “countering terrorism”. It is independent, but subject to parliamentary control. Therefore, its decisions and role are proportional to the respective political authority and the ruling party. In my case, it exceeds its role, which is the control of economic actions that violate the legal framework, and enters a sphere of political targeting that concerns my very ability to survive in a regime outside of prison. Its decisions conflict with articles and provisions of the Constitution and the ECHR regarding human rights, but its authority and its purpose place the issue of state security (public security according to itself) as a prominent criterion of its decisions with arguments that strongly contradict common sense, since it is about paying off debts to the tax office.
I know that all laws concerning human rights have always been, at least in part, pretentious since they were applied – whenever they were applied – with many asterisks, depending on which rights of which person they concerned each time. I know that the existence of an international law that had been institutionalized to delimit the limits of the power of states over people after the Second World War was always applied on a case-by-case basis, depending on the interpretation that each state body gave and depending on which social groups it concerned. The rights of the powerful have always prevailed over those who had no power and therefore, their rights could be violated depending on state priorities.
I know that in the era of neoliberal globalization, especially with the withdrawal of the so-called “welfare state” from history, all these supranational legal frameworks were violated incessantly according to the policies of big capital and states. I also know that today, more than any other era after the Second World War, where the model of the extreme nationalist-war state is becoming more and more visibly dominant, with power becoming the supreme factor in regime politics, as it is expressed both within and outside the borders, any institutionalizations regarding human rights have become tattered papers without any value. Especially in Greece, with the imposition of the “memoranda”, the Constitution has been dismantled, so any reference to it is without substance. The international law established by states has been blatantly violated in recent years with genocides, wars, ethnic cleansing, the extermination of the weak with military or economic weapons, with violence without limits on all social resistances.
I know that this era when someone could invoke international law and the Constitution has passed irrevocably, while within countries, human rights issues are treated as obstacles to the unhindered exercise of full state power. Besides, I have never had any illusions about the gravity and power of any legal framework that focused on the issue of human rights, but in our time it does not exist in practice, not even as a pretextual narrative for the maintenance of social cohesion around the necessity of the existence of state power.
If I mention the legal framework that prevails over the Authority and which it violates for me as well as for many who have been convicted under Article 187A and have served their sentence, it is because it reveals that it is more of a political than a legal institution, with the authority to take revenge in economic terms on political opponents of the political and economic system, through the imposition of a sentence above and beyond the sentence they have served (since they remain for life as potential “terrorists”) and secondly, because – as my case shows – the Authority is allowed to stand above and beyond any legal framework it wants, even common sense. Because what the Authority is telling me is that I have no right to something that is legally mine, that it is binding it to me forever, that I must have a debt that will constantly increase without any possibility of being paid off and that the door to prison will always remain ajar for me, as this debt will become even more difficult to bear.
The lifelong freezing of an asset is within its jurisdiction, since it can justify based on a court conviction that I was a member of a “terrorist” organization. Yes, I was arrested in 2010 for participating in the Revolutionary Struggle organization and from the very beginning I assumed political responsibility for my participation in it. I was arrested again in 2017. I have been convicted of all the political actions of the organization and have served the prison sentence imposed on me. Based on these facts, I have been included in the Authority’s list since 2011 and they are freezing all the assets that have passed to me forever. I have no ambition that they can ever remove me from this list, which makes me a hostage for life.
What is provided for by the legislation regarding the Authority, however, is that it can decide to release assets to cover general living expenses, for their maintenance or operation or preservation. Does this provision not include the issue of my livelihood, when the state obliges me to repay a debt of 45,000 euros? Does it prohibit the use of an asset, the value of which barely reaches the debt in question?
With this decision, it includes the transfer of money to the tax office in the “prevention of terrorist acts”. That is what common sense says. Because I have not asked them for anything more.
The deputy prosecutor of the Supreme Court insists on the same decision. He proposes the rejection of my appeal because, as he says, the Authority rightly decided to maintain the seizure, since “there are serious reasons that make it necessary not to release the assets, even if they are legal, and they constitute… measures that are independent of money laundering, and were taken… exclusively for the prevention and suppression of relevant acts”. That is, the transfer of amounts from any exploitation of an asset to the tax office constitutes a “measure to prevent and suppress relevant acts”!
With the appeal that I have made to the Supreme Court, I am called upon to prove that the repayment of debts to the tax office does not constitute an action suspicious of acts related to “terrorism”? Because this follows from the prosecutor’s proposal. Behind the irrationality that characterizes the prosecutor’s proposal to the upcoming Council of the Supreme Court where my appeal against the Authority’s decision will be examined, it will be judged, through the justification of the decision, whether they intend to complete a plan of lifelong hostage, colonization of my life through debt, an organized economic extermination with the ultimate direction of prison, the door of which will open for me, depending on the political goals of the government at that time, which the legislative power will institutionalize and the judicial power will execute, regarding the penalties that the courts must impose in cases of large debts to the public in general for the whole of society and in particular for those who have dynamically opposed the political-economic system of power and are included for their entire lives on the state’s blacklists.
P.S.: Regarding the four court cases that were held in 2025 for the return of a confiscated external hard drive with files -photos and videos- of my child (I had published a relevant text last December), which had been confiscated during my arrest in 2017 and I had been trying to get it back since 2019, they ended with the last court decision in December, with which it was finally returned to me.
2/2/2025
Pola Roupa