Cabinet on Wednesday resolved to hire an investigator to probe the conduct of former transport ministry permanent secretary Yiannis Nicolaides in relation to the matter of faulty airbags in Cyprus and their import into the country.

Nicolaides, who is now the social welfare deputy ministry’s permanent secretary, was named in the report written by the committee formed to investigate the history of faulty airbags in Cyprus.

He remains in post at the social welfare deputy ministry for now, however, with the government having elected not to suspend him.

The investigator will work to determine whether or not he committed any “disciplinary offences” while in post at the transport ministry between June 2022 and June 2023.

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The report had highlighted the decade between 2013 and 2023, when Efthymios Flourentzou, Marios Demetriades, Vasiliki Anastasiadou, and incumbent Famagusta district governor Yiannis Karousos were in post, with Nicolaides having been one of four permanent secretaries to serve during that period.

Transport ministers past and present had testified in front of the committee while it was holding open sessions earlier in the year. All of them said they had no knowledge of the issue of faulty airbags.

Incumbent minister Alexis Vafeades had, according to the report, not been informed “by the competent authorities or by the ministry’s permanent secretary, who should have duly informed him”. Nicolaides was in post as permanent secretary when Vafeades took office.

The legal service took receipt of the report earlier this month and forwarded it both to cabinet and to the police last week, saying that the police in particular had taken receipt of it “with instructions for the investigation of all possible criminal offences by any person”.

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.