On 2 January 2023, we informed the Attorney General about the potential commission of criminal or civil offences in connection with the conclusion by the Ministry of Finance of two contracts with financial consultants, one in November 2021 and one in July 2022, without available funds and by direct award, without an open tender, in violation of the relevant public procurement legislation. The relevant decisions were taken by the Minister of Finance and the Director General of his Ministry.
As the newspaper Phileleftheros publishes today, the Ministry of Finance, apparently in an attempt to create the appropriate background that will enable a non-criminal investigation of the complaint we have submitted, has also submitted a complaint to the Attorney General. The complaint concerns the fact that in September 2022 we informed, after being requested to do so, the relevant Parliamentary Committee on Finance and Budget of the heterobaric for the state and illegal agreement that the Government was launching to extend the airport agreement by 5.5 years and of the illegal agreement that would involve incentives to airlines. When the Government realised how exposed it was to what it was promoting with the 5.5 year extension agreement, it froze it, unfortunately without yet seeing action to enforce the commencement of construction of the contracted Phase B of the airports. As for the incentive agreement, after our arguments, it was improved with a benefit of €46 million for the Republic.
The Treasury's complaints are patently unsubstantiated and ridiculous. Alas, it would have been a criminal offence, or even remotely dishonest, to inform the relevant Parliamentary Committee about a public contract, especially since the Committee itself invited us to enlighten it before it decided to release the funds. Such information was imperative and necessary, and what is obscene, and potentially criminal, is only the attempted concealment of information by the Ministry of Finance, by not informing the Committee that the contracts for which it had requested the release of appropriations had already been concluded. And since the Ministry apparently knows this, the only explanation is that the Ministry believes that such a complaint of its own could be sufficient justification for the Attorney General to rule that, since the Ministry of Finance has also made a complaint (even if it is unsubstantiated), it will not open a criminal investigation into the complaint that we made "in the public interest".
Unfortunately, we are repeating the events we have been experiencing since 2015, when on 14.12.2015, the Council of Ministers attacked our Service by decision, an attack that culminated in 2020 when, following our revelations about the Cyprus Naturalisation Programme, the Attorney General publicly called us to order, the Government stated that the President was considering the possibility of initiating proceedings for the dismissal of the Auditor General and a TV station was allowed to leak news that the Legal Service was even considering criminal prosecution of the Auditor General.
In 2015, the then Attorney General, exclaiming the historical "shame", had explained that "the accused are being turned into accusers" on the basis of unsubstantiated allegations that constitute a "smokescreen and disorientation". We also recall the recent case concerning prisons when, as soon as the Director of Prisons denounced a certain police official for corruption offences, two criminal investigations were suddenly launched against her.
Unfortunately, the Government remains unfit for the constitutionally mandated scrutiny of our Service.
(NG)
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