The numbers don’t lie – Article by Leontios Filotheou
28 August 2022, “Haravgi” newspaper
Numbers never lie, as people like to say. So let’s look at the numbers:
- 192 pages of the Audit Office’s report on the ‘golden passports’ scheme.
- The word “illegality” and its derivatives are mentioned 76 times in the report.
- 107 cases of Interior Ministers destroying memos noting that investors did not fulfill the criteria that had been set.
- 74 cases where the memos went to the Cabinet which subsequently collectively ignored them by granting citizenship to even drug dealers.
- 200 million VAT was spared, just because it was a large amount.
- 25 million from fees that were not collected. Mother Teresa herself didn’t engage in such charity…
- 1 billion in cancelled contracts and 3.5 billion pending contracts.
- 3,810 persons who were granted citizenships because they were: daughters, sons, wives and harems, cousins, grooms (other grooms), brother-in-laws and family in-laws (other in-laws).
These are just some of the findings the Auditor General’s Report highlights. With the exception of 2-3 regimes in Sub-Saharan Africa, in any other “normal” country in the world, such a report would provoke a political upheaval, lead to resignations and criminal investigations. You know, one of those strange countries where Ministers resign because they spent EUR 15 from their official credit card.
However, in sea-grit Cyprus, the protagonists of the report, the President of the Republic and his Ministerial Cabinet, with the publication of the report, have (literally) thrown a feast frenzy in Troodos, stating that they will carefully study (metaphorical speaking) the money feast of the report.
DISY President and presidential candidate Averof Neophytou happened to be in the Congo. Now if it’s supposedly to stem the flow of migrants or to explain to them how to do business right, I’ll kid you.
Furthermore, Anastasiades’ former Foreign Minister and presidential candidate Nikos Christodoulides, who for almost 10 years has been a protagonist in what the report attributes without he himself ever disagreeing (initially, as the government spokesman he defended the government’s citizenship for investment programme, and subsequently took part in Cabinet meetings approving citizenship applications), took more than 12 hours to find some time between touring local festivals, consulting with citizens and posing nicely to issue a statement, blaming…some aliens for the scandal of the century.
And so for the icing on the cake, it’s good to remember that just over there in the Attorney General’s office the people in charge of taking this report and investigating any responsibilities were both members of the Cabinet who were themselves protagonists in the report, so they are being asked to investigate themselves as well.
In closing, the “significant discovery” of natural gas in Block 6 was the headline news of the day for some sections of the mass media – by accident of course… One more report issued and we’ll find oil too. And gold, not to mention diamonds.
P.S. Corruption. Entangleme4nt/interwoven interests. Unfair enrichment. Conflict of interest. Abuse of power. Illegalities. Wheeling and dealing. Granting of citizenships to convicts. Millions in lost revenue that no one is investigating in exchange one wonders for what. A crime committed without punishment.
For that reason, let’s think about what’s at stake for a moment…
