ATTENTION-CRAVING auditor-general Odysseas will have experienced heights of ecstasy unknown to ordinary mortals in the last week, during which he was the only story playing.
He released the report about his investigation into the citizenship by investment scheme on Monday, and since then he has been firmly rooted at the centre of public attention.
He appeared at two House committee meetings on consecutive days, the government spokesman issued three statements about the report, which was the lead story in the media all week, and he inspired dozens of indignant announcement by the parties, not to mention a show-stopping performance about corruption by Akel diva Irini Charalambidou.
After recovering from the overdose of ecstasy, he must have been feeling pretty pleased with his week’s work, which will have reconfirmed his status as the top corruption-buster and most honest (not to mention narcissistic) state official in the history of Kyproulla.
It is a big mystery he is not standing as an independent presidential candidate as he would be a certain winner and have the opportunity to clean up Kyproulla and put all the crooked politicians that have been ransacking the country into prison.
LEAVING aside the publicity-seeking, Odysseas’ report was another emphatic confirmation of the corrupt practices promoted and encouraged by Prez Nik, who pursued a state policy that proved extremely lucrative for his family’s business interests.
You had to laugh at the government’s assertion that the report “does not attribute responsibilities to the president”. How did it know, considering the government spokesman claimed the report had not been read and that the government would issue its response after studying it. And why had it not studied it, considering the audit service had handed over the report a fortnight before its public release?
Despite not studying it, the government was very quick to point out that Odysseas’ report said the same things as the Myron Nikolatos report, issued after the official investigation of the scheme. Nikolatos’ report did not say, however, that €1.1 billion worth of investment, representing 145 passport applications, had been cancelled while another €3.5 billion worth of investments might not have materialised.
Apart from being economical with the truth, the government also tried to play the victim of Odysseas’ persecution. Why had the auditor-general not investigated the issuing of passports prior to 2013 when Nik became prez?
Could it be because in the five years, from 2008 to 2012, 122 passports were issued to foreign investors, whereas during Nik’s golden rule, up to 2021, 3,395 were issued plus 3,810 to members of the investors’ families? During the golden rule citizenships were granted on an industrial scale.
IRREGULARITIES, such as the suppressing of unfavourable information about applicants, disregard for failure of applicants to satisfy the criteria, abuse of discretionary powers by the cabinet were all mentioned in Odysseas’ report.
There were also cases of information proving an applicant’s ineligibility, provided by officials examining applications at the interior ministry, not being forwarded to the council of ministers with the application. Approvals were issued to applications which did not meet the criteria but were still in the spirit of the citizenship scheme.
All these irregularities could only have taken place with Prez Nik’s encouragement and approval. It is impossible that the council of ministers would have approved applications that did not satisfy the criteria if the big chief objected. Nor would interior ministry bureaucrats have suppressed information about applicants, without having orders from above to do so.
None of the irregularities and abuses would have taken place without the approval of the top dog, who is known to have zero tolerance for insubordinate subordinates. This was probably the reason he placed his wife’s niece, someone he could trust to do as she was told, in charge of the citizenship scheme at the interior ministry.
ODYSSEAS made another appearance at the legislature on Wednesday, when he was invited to the House education committee to give his legal opinion about the status of the English School. The committee considered his legal opinions more reliable than the attorney-general’s.
This was the second meeting held to discuss the sacking of three teachers by the board of the school during the summer holidays. The teachers claim they were sacked because they were leading members of the staff union, while the school management denies this, arguing that the decision was based on violations of internal regulations and the code of conduct.
Opposition parties have all taken up the cause of the teachers, hence the committee meetings, and have called on Prez Nik to intervene in the dispute and reinstate the teachers. Nik, correctly, has refused to do so, because it is not in his power to over-rule the decision of the board of a private school lawfully exercising its rights.
It is not against the law for a school board to sack teachers, so why the hysterical reaction by the lawmakers? Probably because the sacked teachers were involved in the union, and as such considered untouchable, even when they commit disciplinary offences.
PUBLIC school teachers are untouchable, even when they are conclusively crap at their job. As for sacking them for disciplinary offences, it is unheard of, with the possible exception of teachers caught fondling kids.
This was the reason the education committee invited Odysseas to its Wednesday meeting. It wanted him to say that the English School was, theoretically, a public school, which would mean it could not sack a teacher for any reason. He tried to oblige, talking like an AG, and saying that despite the fact the school was not a legal entity under public law, it did not mean the state had no say in what it did. This was clearly a legal opinion.
He then spoke about the cash assistance received by the school from the state, suggesting in his expert legal opinion that it should be treated as a public school, and therefore obliged to treat its teacher as untouchable.
FINANCE minister Constantinos Petrides is one of the few politicians with the cojones to swim against the political tide. On Friday, in a written statement he lashed out against the “hypocrisy of the political system” which had been slamming the government for allowing citizenship investors to pay discounted VAT – 5 instead of 19 percent – on the luxury homes they bought.
Odysseas’ report said the state was deprived of €200 million in VAT revenue as result, something all the parties picked up and made a huge fuss about. It was left to Petrides to point out on Friday that the reduction of VAT to 5 per cent on 200 square metres of a house for first-time buyers was decided and approved by the parties in the legislature in 2016, when the citizenship scheme was already in place.
The government had nothing to do with this, he said, explaining that the VAT discount drafted by the parties, allegedly as a “social measure” applied to everyone, including foreign nationals buying a residence, irrespective of the value of the property.
The government, which is in trouble with the Commission over the VAT discount, had sent a bill that would scrap the discount to the House last January, but parties have yet to approve it.
THE PRESIDENTIAL election campaign appears to have move to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Disy candidate Averof has gone to arrange the repatriation of Congolese asylum seekers currently enjoying Kyproulla’s hospitality.
It was not Averof’s smartest move as it was mercilessly mocked on social media and is unlikely to achieve its objective. And where does he stop? Would he now travel to Lagos, as there are probably more asylum seekers from Nigeria than from Congo? And then Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cameroon?
Apart from losing the asylum seeker vote his repatriation initiative will leave him no time for his own campaigning.
ELAM voters are unlikely to be wooed as they are demanding more drastic action. The party was furious about the attack at the Limassol A&E department, where “illegal immigrants of African origin hit a doctor and policeman, whom they dragged for 90 metres with their car.”
It asked, making no attempt to conceal its racism: “We wonder if they act in this way towards policemen, what they will do tomorrow to ordinary citizens?”
The party demands the freezing of all asylum applications, mass deportations of all illegal migrants and the cutting of all benefits that maintain migration.
THE TRADITIONAL over-reaction by doctors and nurses’ unions to the incident involved a two-hour strike at the Limassol A&E, which sparked sympathy action at Paphos A&E, where nobody has been attacked for the last two years. One policeman private security guard were not enough to protect the doctors, said union boss Dr Soteris Koumas.
He stopped short of demanding a squad of riot police to guard the A&E, but suggested the hiring of more staff, the solution to all problems in the public sector for union bosses. With more staff, patients would be seen promptly and not become angry and aggressive for waiting long hours to be treated, he said.
Why don’t they try to tone down their rudeness to patients as a first step, which will be cheaper for the taxpayer. It might work with people of African origin as well.
AS FAR as over-reactions go, however, the Russian authorities take the biscuit. On Monday evening, a reportedly drunk middle-aged Ukrainian woman, brandishing a kitchen knife, went to a place in Larnaca where a couple of dozen jingoistic Russians gathered to celebrate their national flag day.
The Russian state was mobilized to demand that the hapless woman, who did not hurt anyone, should be charged with attempted murder. Ambassador Stan Osadchiy, who was supposedly leaving Kyproulla, complained that she was not charged with murder and that she had been released on bail. “We insist it was attempted murder” said Stan, even though he was unable to produce a victim.
Meanwhile a Russian organisation that deals with diaspora on behalf of the foreign ministry, had asked Russian investigators to prosecute the woman on terrorism charges, and the head of Russia’s investigative committee has ordered a criminal prosecution for the ‘attack’, which never happened. What next? A request from the Russian Federation to extradite the terrorist with the kitchen knife to Moscow?
