Myrsini Loizou, SYRIZA’s candidate for the European Parliament has announced she will resign after it was revealed by protothema.gr she had been receiving her deceased mother’s pension for five and a half years after her death.

“In an effort to create impressions, some media conflated two separate cases that concern me. One case relates to the honourary pension received by my mother, an award-winning and prolific writer, Maro Loizou, from the Ministry of Culture. Obviously, I recognise that this pension has been wrongly paid for some time. However, this mistake is not mine, since, after my mother’s death, I immediately told him to the competent services”, she wrote.

“The reason why the pension continued to be paid is related to bureaucratic procedures, which, to my knowledge, often happens to many citizens. Indeed, I recognized my debt for this case before the court and repaid it”, she wrote.

She went on to explain about the other case in her letter of resignation: “The second case concerns a debt to the tax and social security funds of about 180,000 euros. This debt came from the family business I held with my ex-husband, who said he was willing to take it entirely, since he was the exclusive manager of economic affairs.”