The interior ministry and audit office are locked in a war of words over the passport scandal as on Friday the two sides sought to discredit each other and shift the blame.
Interior Minister Nicos Nouris, speaking on CyBC radio, argued that had the audit office carried out proper checks in 2016 then the investment programme could have been saved and may still be in existence today.
Nouris further hit out saying that the audit office is selectively carrying out its work, and in this case it is doing so after the fact.
However, Auditor-general Odysseas Michaelides’ office reiterated that the government consistently sought to block their investigations into the programme. And when they did investigate, the office said, the government sought to downplay or quash those efforts by questioning whether they had the authority to do so.
The office pointed to the case on January 1, 2020 when they had almost completed their report into the naturalisation of a Saudi Arabian investor, five other investors and 36 members of their families, at which point President Nicos Anastasiades sent the office a letter directly doubting their authority to carry out such an investigation.
The interior minister also framed the timing of the Audit office’s release on Monday as suspect, pointing to the upcoming presidential elections in February. But the office hit back saying that the report would have been released much earlier had the interior ministry and other government departments cooperated instead of blocking their efforts.
Nouris and Michaelides locked horns at Thursday’s House watchdog committee, which lasted about four hours, which was looking into the audit office’s report. In it, the office reported that the public lost hundreds of millions of euros through the mismanagement of the investment scheme.
The events on Thursday at parliament drew strong reactions on social media, particularly when Nouris sought to illustrate the difficulty in handing over the burdensome paperwork. He lifted a stack of papers and quipped that they would have had to turn up to work in pickup trucks instead of saloon cars to hand over the documents. Members of the public, however, questioned why the process was not digitised and was instead a symbol of sclerotic government bureaucracy.
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