A court has found fault with the cabinet’s prior decision to revoke the citizenship of an Indian investor, reports said on Tuesday.

The case concerns Indian national Anubhav Aggarwal, who had secured a Cypriot passport in 2016 under the now-defunct citizenship-via-investment programme.

In 2021, following a report by a commission of inquiry – known as the Nikolatos committee – the cabinet moved to revoke the passports of scores of foreign investors.

Aggarwal was one of those swept up in the revocations net.

The cabinet had sought the opinion of the citizenship revocation committee. That panel concluded that Aggarwal had misled authorities in his citizenship application, by omitting to mention he had been implicated in a financial fraud case under investigation in India. The cabinet then accepted this opinion, and canceled Aggarwal’s citizenship.

The man’s wife and son also had their Cypriot citizenships revoked.

Aggarwal then appealed the decision with the administrative court.

Earlier this week, the administrative ruled in his favour, according to Phileleftheros.

From 2011 to 2014, Aggarwal had been an executive with ARK Imports Private Limited, the company implicated in a spot exchange scam in India.

In 2020 he was reportedly arrested in Abu Dhabi on the strength of an international warrant – a ‘red notice’ issued by Interpol.

The Nikolatos report had mentioned Aggarwal by name, noting that he “appeared” to have furnished false or misleading information on his application for Cypriot citizenship.

His lawyers subsequently told the citizenship revocation committee that during the material time – when he applied for citizenship – the man was not wanted by authorities. Criminal proceedings against him began in 2017, after he obtained the Cypriot passport. However, in their filings they did concede that Aggarwal did not disclose his ties to ARK – but that this was not out of intent to deceive.

According to the administrative court’s ruling, the citizenship revocation committee failed to take these facts into consideration.

In her ruling, the judge confirmed that Aggarwal was not wanted by authorities either before or during the material time. No criminal case had been filed against him at the time.

Therefore, the judge said, the conclusions of the citizenship revocation committee had been “misguided”.

Moreover, the administrative court said that no attention was paid to the fact that Aggarwal was rendered stateless by having his Cypriot passport revoked. He had relinquished his Indian citizenship on becoming a Cypriot citizen. Indian nationals cannot hold dual citizenship.

The court stressed this point, noting that depriving the man of his Cypriot citizenship constituted “a disproportionate measure”.

In August 2020, the Al Jazeera news network released the ‘Cyprus Papers’ – a documents dump relating to Cyprus’ investment programme.

The media outlet conducted an investigation based on the leaked papers, alleging to have found that the Republic of Cyprus provided citizenship through the programme to several people linked to crime and corruption.

In October of the same year, Al Jazeera released a video of an undercover investigation related to the ‘Cyprus Papers’. The video purported to reveal how Cypriot lawyers, businesspeople and top-tier politicians were willing to aid and abet convicted criminals to obtain Cypriot citizenship, granting them access to the European Union’s internal markets and visa-free travel.

The reveals led to the Nikolatos commission of inquiry, which found that 53 per cent of the 6,779 passports issued between 2007 and 2020 were granted illegally or irregularly.