‘They don’t go for jewellery any more’: Olive oil theft on the rise in Greece

As poor harvests send prices soaring, one raid mounted on a quiet rural grower netted an illicit haul worth €300,000

The Polygyros olive oil cooperative does not seem a likely target for a heist. If anything, its setting, at the foot of the Holomontas mountain in Halkidiki, evokes the bucolic innocence of rural Greece.

Certainly its breezeblock warehouses bear little resemblance to the modern premises that house the Mitseas olive mills in southern Messinia. But in recent weeks both have been targeted by thieves, who gained entry through a battered iron door in Polygyros and a hi-tech security portal in Messinia. “The oil has gone,” said Yannis Keliafanos, a farmer at the cooperative. “There is very little of it left.”

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