A hard-liner follows a fellow right-winger as head of Greece's migration and asylum ministry
Athens, Greece — A hard-right lawmaker has replaced a fellow right-winger and political heavyweight accused of fraud as migration and asylum minister in Greece's government, a government spokesman announced Saturday.
Thanos Plevris, 48, is succeeding Makis Voridis, 60, who resigned Friday to defend himself against allegations that he was possibly involved in an organized fraud scheme to provide farm subsidies to undeserving recipients.
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Towards the end of the event someone recognised Jhaj - who had previously been found guilty of sexual activity with two 15-year-olds in 2016 and sent to prison. The fake red carpet was one of a litany of stunts he has organised since his release which often involve casting girls as his fans. All have been organised at great expense, while he was on the Sex Offenders Register and subject to restrictions on his activities. For the mock-wedding at Disneyland Paris a nine-year-old Ukrainian girl was flown in to play his bride. The theme park can be privately rented outside of its opening hours and actors had been booked at great cost to be there – one received £10,000. The BBC understands that Jacky Jhaj, 39, who is from west London, has now been charged by French authorities in connection with organising the event. Over the past two years I've set out to try and understand how he has been able to carry out these stunts and why there are not more stringent rules preventing them. 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Clips on social media sites appear to cast Jhaj as a successful writer and singer and are often styled as music videos. Many are highly concerning - some feature him posing with young children and weapons. It is not clear if the guns are real or fake. Others revel in his infamy. In one, he is greeted by fans apparently celebrating his release from Wormwood Scrubs prison. I wanted to know how he had organised the stunts – and if he had received help. Over the past two years, I have spoken to videographers, production assistants and technicians who were hired for some of the events before they discovered Jhaj's real identity. One man repeatedly appears in videos they shared with me. We have been sent images and footage of him at three of the stunts by people who described him as assisting the choreographer hired for dance auditions, and apparently filming. At a different event last year, he was confronted by duped cast members who recognised Jhaj from our reports and showed him the online article. The cast members filmed him acknowledging that Jhaj is a convicted sex offender but he says he is his "friend" and is now "free". At this event Jhaj was filmed posing naked in front of a mocked-up BBC News lorry in London which had been set on fire. Jhaj had initially appeared there disguised by prosthetics – before he removed them and was identified as the man from our story. Preliminary findings from the French prosecutor also said that make-up artists had allegedly changed the organiser's facial features dramatically at the Disneyland event. How Jhaj funds his stunts - which involve extraordinary costs on venue hire, casts and props - is a mystery. One production hired a tank, while in another a mock police car was set on fire. The booking of Disneyland Paris alone would have cost more than €130,000 (£110,000), according to the French broadcaster BFMTV. I was also told that hiring the red carpet space that is the home of movie premieres in Leicester Square would have required tens of thousands of pounds. Jhaj was listed as a director of a business that was wound up in 2016 – but there is no other obvious source of money. I also wanted to know how he had been able to carry out these events while subject to a sexual harm prevention order. We have seen a copy of it. It lists ten restrictions on his activities – but does not appear to explicitly prohibit the stunts he had organised. The order restricts Jhaj from contacting his previous victims, entering public places for the use of children and deliberately contacting any girl under the age of 16. However, there is no blanket ban on hosting events with children under 16 if they are supervised – as was the case with the Leicester Square stunt, where some adults attended as chaperones. I also wanted to know who, if anyone, was responsible for monitoring convicted paedophiles. Following my first report, a police officer who helped monitor Jhaj rang me, asking for information on his movements. He said he was responsible for managing the whereabouts of dozens of offenders - and it was challenging work. The National Police Chiefs' Council advise that the minimum safe staffing levels at which paedophiles should be monitored is one officer to every 50 offenders. The Metropolitan Police's average offender management ratio was one officer to 40 offenders – well within the benchmark. I asked other forces what their ratios were and some never replied. But 10 out of 26 forces failed to meet this benchmark, according to Freedom of Information requests received last year. At one force, officers were responsible for monitoring 85 offenders each on average. Some forces defended their resourcing – arguing that these are advisory levels only and also dependent on risk assessments of offenders. But successfully managing 50 sex offenders is "impossible" according to Jonathan Taylor, a safeguarding expert and former child abuse investigator. "I feel so sorry for the officers", he says. "It's a poisoned chalice - one of the paedophiles will re-offend. This case also highlights concerns about a lack of safeguarding in entertainment and tech companies enabling these types of offenders." The BBC understands that Jhaj is currently detained in French custody. The local prosecutor there says the Ukrainian girl involved in Saturday's stunt had not been a victim of either physical or sexual violence and had not been forced to play the role of a bride. His statement also said Disneyland Paris had been "deceived" and that the organiser had used a fake Latvian ID to hire the venue. The BBC approached Disneyland Paris for comment - they did not respond. The Metropolitan Police said that a 39-year-old man is wanted by them for breaching restrictions placed on his activities, and is also separately being investigated for "any possible" fraud offences. Additional reporting by Alex Dackevych and Richard Irvine-Brown.
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