Immediate and complete catharsis of all aspects of the ‘golden passport’ industry
Statement by Yiorgos Loucaides, AKEL Political Bureau member
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 18th October 2020
Our country’s international shaming over several years is continuing, with the latest video of Al Jazeera broadcast all over the world, while reports in the Greek media once again present evidence with regards the direct involvement of the President of the Republic himself, the law firm of Nicos Anastasiades and the members of his family.
AKEL will continue to lead the way in demanding the immediate and thorough investigation into all the aspects of the so-called Cyprus Investment Program (CIP), regardless of who it may concern, in whatever political spectrum they may belong, no matter how prominent a post they may hold in the state hierarchy.
This is the only way our people’s sense of justice will be restored and the only way it will be possible to gradually restore our country’s prestige and credibility internationally.
Al Jazeera’s video, due to the involvement of state officials, may have been more effective in presenting the culture and practices built around the so-called CIP, but it did not reveal anything new or unknown that was taking place in practice for years with the blessings of the Anastasiades-DISY government.
Nicos Anastasiades and the ruling DISY party set up and perpetuated until the very end a rotten program for the granting of citizenships, which in essence was consumerist and not really for investment purposes, given that the purchase of a property/real estate was considered enough for the issuing of the golden EU passport. For years, as AKEL, we have been denouncing that a ring of interwoven interests and corruption, centred in Limassol, was set up around this consumer program of luxurious properties/real estate, a feast for a privileged few and yet another “bubble” in the economy, with manifold negative side effects.
It is indicative that just a few days before the video was broadcast, the Audit Office was presenting in its findings that in three of the five citizenships it checked, passports were issued first to the wives of husbands and subsequently to their husbands. Indeed in one case, one year later, the wife proceeded into a cohabitation agreement with her husband, who on the same day applied for citizenship, which the Anastasiades-DISY Council of Ministers of course granted him on the basis not of the letter but of the spirit of the law!!
In addition to the direct political involvement of the President of the Republic and his Ministers, both past and present, in the formulation, defence and covering up of all that was taking place in connection with the golden passport industry that they themselves had set up, the direct business involvement of several of them in the program is a fact. This in itself raises justifiable doubts as to the credibility of any investigation that will take place, so that the investigation actually goes to the very end and catharsis occurs.
That is precisely why it is imperative that the Audit Office has direct access to all the files under investigation, as we have already proposed, while AKEL is also looking at other possible ways for the investigation to proceed, with due credibility and probe all the aspects and all those involved in everything that has shamed our country all over the world in recent years.
