State officials have been illegally receiving multiple state pensions, the auditor-general’s office said on Wednesday, calling on the treasury to put an end to the practice immediately.
Spokesman for the service Marios Petrides told the Cyprus Mail the illegality has been ongoing for a decade now and was only discovered out of sheer luck during a recent House finance committee session.
The audit office sent a letter to the treasury earlier this week calling it to put an end to the ongoing practice. As things are currently, officials who are still in office receive multiple pensions along with their salary.
“This is blatantly illegal,” Petrides said.
He said the laws regulating the matter date back to 1980 and 1997. However, unbeknownst to the audit office, a court ruling in 2014 was used by the attorney-general’s office to overrule the articles of the laws that specified if someone was working for the state, their pension for any other official post should be suspended.
According to Petrides, this was discovered coincidentally during a House finance committee in October, and the audit office has since moved to examine numerous cases.
He described there are “dozens” of such cases, for which out of a sample of 25, the audit office found numerous.
The treasury had not responded by Wednesday, Petrides said.
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