Former auditor-general Odysseas Michaelides on Thursday accused President Nikos Christodoulides and attorney-general George Savvides of “collusion” to ensure he was removed from his post.

In a letter to the House audit committee, he said serious problems arose from the time at which he had carried out an audit on the presidential office and found that Christodoulides should return €18,176 he was paid in 2018 for accumulated leave as a member of the civil service, despite the fact he had been government spokesman for four years already.

He said he had addressed his report to Charalambos Charalambous, director of the president’s office, and that Charalambous was as such “obliged to take measures to comply with the recommendations contained in the report”.

This, he said, “especially applied to those recommendations requiring Nikos Christodoulides, not the president of the Republic, to repay the money he had illegally received between 2014 and 2018”.

He added that on this matter, if Charalambous required legal advice, “he could have requested the attorney-general’s opinion”.

However, he claimed that in reality, instead of allowing Charalambous to act on the report and “act uninfluenced”, instead “violated any concept of moral ethics, requested a legal opinion himself, and exerted impermissible pressure [on the legal service] with the weight of his position”.

Then, he said, “the attorney-general essentially acted as if he were Christodoulides’ private lawyer”.

Referring to how he believes the process should have played out, he said that Article 139 of the Republic of Cyprus’ constitution would have allowed the president’s office to challenge the audit office’s right to issue the findings it had in court at any time within 30 days of the report being issued.

As such, he said, in this instance, Christodoulides could have challenged his right to make the recommendations he made and argue that he had overstepped his remit at the Supreme Constitutional Court at any time before January 6 this year.

“Obviously, however, the president’s plan, together with the attorney-general and his assistant [Savvas Angelides] was to eliminate me. This is something they ultimately achieved with the president’s decisive influence and with the help of seven members of the Supreme Constitutional Court,” he said.

He then added that “it became clear in retrospect” that Savvides was “washing off Christodoulides’ debts”, and that at the same time, Savvides and Christodoulides were “at the presidential palace discussing the strategy they would follow and who would sign the application to court to have me removed”.

“In the end, they decided that the attorney-general would sign it since the president was afraid of the political cost, in the same way that now, fearing the political cost, he is hiding behind the attorney-general and attempting to ruin me financially,” he said.

On this point, he was referring to claims he had made last month that the government is “illegally withholding” his pension and other financial benefits he believes he is due on account of his time spent in the public sector.

He also made reference to a government opinion that he had acted “abusively and in excess of his power” which was leaked on news website Reporter, and was keen to note that Reporter is “in the interest of the interior minister” Constantinos Ioannou, who is a shareholder of Reporter’s owner IMH.

He added that newspaper Politis had said the government had characterised his conduct as “improper”, though the case in question was not included in the file compiled by Savvides to have him dismissed, with Michaelides saying this was “obviously to protect those involved”.

The other issue he said had been left out of the file for the same reason was the case of service weapons ending up in the hands of private individuals, including former president Nicos Anastasiades.

“The fact that these two issues were not included confirms that the request [for dismissal] was the product of cooperation between the current and former presidents and the heads of the legal service,” he said.

He added that the fact that this opinion was leaked in fragments to Reporter rather than being “officially and fully made public” is “completely consistent with a policy of obscurity and opacity followed in all matters by the presidency and the legal service”.

He then delved into specifics regarding audits he had carried out on Christodoulides, and criticised Savvides for pushing back on his findings.

“The attorney-general, once an independent legal advisor, was transformed into a political supporter of and apologist for the president. It is obvious that there was a mutual service of goals and aspirations between them, which continues to this day with the issues of my rights,” he said.

One such example of this, he said, is when Savvides found that Christodoulides had been using government vehicles for private travel while working as government spokesman – a role which does not entitle one to use government cars.

Savvides had responded to Michaelides’ report by saying that “the methodology followed to calculate the mileage indicates an intention to discredit the president”, but Michaelides disputes this.

“The attorney-general decided to act as an auditor, made his own numerical calculations of how far Christodoulides travelled illegally with taxpayers’ money, and concluded that the audit office’s calculations were incorrect,” he said.

On the matter of the €18,176 Christodoulides received for accumulated leave in 2018, he said Christodoulides “did not complete the leave forms provided for civil servants” during his time as government spokesman but that then, in 2018, “he remembered because it suited him that he had been a civil servant for the previous four years and completed the forms for the previous four years without putting a date on them”.

He then acknowledged that Savvides had closed the matter and that his successor Andreas Papaconstantinou would likely not reopen the case, but wrote that “this does not mean that the issue should be closed for the committee as well, since you have every right to carry out audits from parliament”.

Michaelides was removed from office by the Supreme Constitutional in September, with an eight-judge panel unanimously ruling that he had conducted himself inappropriately, and that he was thus unfit to carry out the office’s duties.

The court’s verdict was 209 pages long and scathing, with Michaelides having been found to have repeatedly sought to undermine Savvides’ legal opinions, often writing his own interpretations which contradicted those of the attorney-general.

It was written in the decision that Michaelides “did not limit himself to the role of the whistleblower to the independent anti-corruption authority but reserved for himself the role of a judge after proceeding to draw conclusions on his statements and submissions.”

Additionally, the court referred to “obscene content” which occurred on a social media page dedicated to supporting Michaelides, saying that although the page did not belong to Michaelides, “it bore his name and photograph”.

Michaelides himself had said the decision “essentially abolishes the audit service and democracy”, adding that it “puts a corset, a gag, on the audit office.”

“It is a black day for Cyprus and a black day for our service,” he said.

Savvides had in turn warned those decrying the decision to read it before passing judgment.

“A court order has been issued and I just want to emphasise that it is important to support the [Republic’s] institutions, and to show the required respect to the Supreme Constitutional Court. Woe betide us if we lose faith in the courts,” he said.