Investigators will now study the report written into the history of faulty airbags in Cyprus and their permeation into the Cypriot market, police spokeswoman Kyriaki Lambrianidou said on Wednesday, after the legal service delivered the report to the police the previous day.

“The report has many pages. Therefore, it should first be studied by the investigators to see whether criminal offences arise. At this stage, we cannot go into details regarding offences or individuals,” she told the Cyprus News Agency.

When the report was delivered to the police on Tuesday, the legal service had said the police had been issued “instructions for the investigation of all possible criminal offences by any person”.

The report stated that the four people who served as transport minister between 2013 and 2023 – Efthymios Flourentzou, Marios Demetriades, Vasiliki Anastasiadou, and incumbent Famagusta district governor Yiannis Karousos – “bear heavy responsibility” for the issue of faulty airbags.

Questions had been raised regarding a circular issued by the road transport department in 2017 on the matter of faulty airbags and the import of ‘grey vehicles’.

In effect, it has been claimed that this circular allowed importers to get away with importing cars with potentially lethal airbags, and that the circular itself, given that the road transport department is subordinate to the transport ministry, constitutes evidence that transport ministers and permanent secretaries of the time knew about the issue and did nothing about it.

Demetriades, who served between 2014 and 2018, said he had no knowledge of the circular during his time in office.

“I categorically declare that during my term in office … I had no involvement in the preparation of the circular … nor did I give any instructions regarding it. This is confirmed by the testimonies of ministry officials who participated in the committee’s work,” he said.

However, the report itself states that even if ministers and permanent secretaries were unaware of the circular or the issue regarding faulty airbags, it would have been their duty to make themselves aware.

“A minister does not need to have direct and personal involvement in an issue for it to be attributed to them,” the report said, adding that “if the people at the top of the political and social pyramid do not take responsibility for their actions, they are encouraging the consolidation of general and political impunity”.

It said the former ministers bear responsibility for “the inaction, negligence, and indifference shown by the road transport department” over the matter, and that the former ministers’ “position that they do not bear any responsibility due to not being informed cannot be accepted”.

“Any act carried out by employees of their ministry or of the services under their ministry ultimately reflects on themselves. In any case, the responsibility for not being formed lies with themselves for another reason, as well,” the report stated.

The issue of airbags stems from the production of faulty airbags by Japanese company Takata. The company’s airbags suffer a fault related to exposure to high levels of heat or humidity, which means they have a tendency to explode when released under such circumstances.

This explosion shoots the airbag’s metal inflator outwards and in the direction of the person it was designed to protect, potentially causing further injuries or, in some cases, death.

Faulty airbags have caused two deaths in Cyprus, those of Styliani Giorgalli last year and Kyriakos Oxinos in 2023, while Alexandros Lougos has so far undergone 21 surgeries to restore his face after being involved in an accident in 2017.