Former Lawmaker Asks Cypriot AG to Reopen Probe Into the Leader of His Party
OCCPR
Cypriot former lawmaker Georgios Varnava has asked the island’s attorney general, Georgios Savvides, to reopen an investigation into a business transaction that involved a fellow party member and allowed an Iraqi national to obtain Cypriot citizenship in 2018.
In 2020, just a month into his AG appointment by then president Nicos Anastasiades, Savvides rejected a police request to lift the parliamentary immunity of Marinos Sizopoulos, the leader of the social democratic EDEK party, and shelved the case, according to a police file obtained by reporters.
Varnava called the decision a “double standard” in a letter to the AG, which he made public earlier this month.
“Covering up such cases, especially involving politicians, sends wrong signals to the people,” Varnava said.
Cypriot police had launched an investigation in 2019 into the sale of Taxan Properties Developers Limited, after questions from tax authorities resulted in claims of conflicting sales contracts and a complaint by two of Taxan’s former shareholders.
According to a report by the ad hoc Nicolatos Committee, which investigated corruption in Cyprus’s golden passports program, the company was 2.6 million euros (US$2.83 million) in debt in 2017 when its shareholders, which included Sizopoulos’s daughters, sold Taxan to an Iraqi businessman.
According to a debt settlement agreement, Bank of Cyprus agreed to accept 1.6 million euros ($1.74 million) and write off the remaining 956,900 euros ($1.04 million) debt from a non-performing loan. As a company director Sizopoulos was one of the loan guarantors, and the Nicolatos report described it as a “[Politically Exposed Person] loan.”
As part of its investigation, the Nicolatos Committee reviewed the Ministry of
