The government ruling forces organised and executed the ‘golden passports’ scandal
Statement by Christos Christofides, AKEL MP and Member of the Parliamentary Control Committee
26 August 2022, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia
The discussion surrounding the Report released by the Auditor General in the Parliamentary Audit Committee, which began yesterday, proved yet again what the whole of Cypriot society knows. Namely, that the Anastasiades-DISY government orchestrated and executed the huge ‘golden passports’ scandal having at its heart an astonishing “feast” mounting to billions. The Ministerial Council of Ministers approved every single passport.
Through the report it has been proven that the government ruling forces broke the law, violated the criteria they themselves had drawn up and set, ignored dissenting officials in order to serve powerful economic interests, which in many cases were their own. We would like to recall that hundreds of passports were granted to applicants whose intermediaries and providers were the law firm of the President of the Republic himself, the law firms of current and former government Ministers, or passports that were granted to people who had developed business activity with relatives of the President of the Republic and his Ministers.
At the same time as certain forces and circles were acquiring enormous sums of money on the backs of the Cypriot people, the state and Cypriot citizens lost billions due to a reduced VAT on primary homes, complications in contracts supposedly signed from pending purchases and fictitious purchases. We can debate with figures on this issue for hours and days on end. After all, the Auditor General’s well-documented report speaks for itself.
The discussion will continue in the coming weeks in the Parliamentary Audit Committee, where AKEL will demand specific answers and, above all, the assignment of criminal and other responsibilities. But the substance of the matter remains: Not a single person has actually taken on any political responsibility from those [members] of the Ministerial Council who had proposed and approved each individual passport.
The protagonists of this huge scandal are the government ruling forces who, despite the fact that they had the responsibility to check each individual passport and implement the law, became the protagonists themselves, enriching themselves and their own relatives.
It is true that we are worried about a cover up of this huge scandal. Yesterday the government ruling forces gave the signal in the Parliamentary Audit Committee that they do not accept the Auditor-General’s report or assume any responsibility. A complication is also presented by the fact that the Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General are themselves involved [in the golden passports scandal], since hundreds of passports were approved in their presence when they had previously served as Ministers in the Anastasiades government.
We are under no illusion at all that there can be any kind of catharsis with the current government. Neither should the Cypriot people harbor the illusion either with a Christodoulides government, who was present for 9 years in the huge golden passport feast, at the approval of each passport individually, who was himself in contact with the EU and ignored all the warnings that were being issued and who had the Cyprus Investment Program under his own responsibility in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Nor should the Cypriot people harbor any illusions with a government under DISY President and presidential candidate Averof Neophytou who was the behind-the-scenes orchestrator of this government, that there could be any cleansing, accountability and restoration of the people’s sense of justice.
