Filenews 24 November 2020 - by Michalis Hatzivasilis
No more impunity for illegals who were not taxed or when convicted did not lose the property they obtained, puts the Police in cooperation with other agencies.
The Chief of Police was yesterday clear on the matter, stressing that three accountants - auditors - have recently been hired to conduct financial investigations into criminal investigations to establish their involvement in financial scandals. The reports of the Chief, Stelios Papatheodorou, were made in the Parliament, as part of the discussion of the budget of the Ministry of Justice. In particular, after a question from MP Anna Theologos that second-class criminals should go to prison while their property acquired from illegal activities remains undisturbed, Mr Papatheodorou said that the recruitment of accountants was done for this purpose. "Our goal," he said, "is to put our hands in the pocket of the outlaws." We note that a meeting was recently held in the Legal Service on this matter.
Presenting her ministry's budget, Emily Yoliti said she looked forward to establishing a more effective and better justice system, ensuring immediacy and transparency in the administration of justice, as befits any modern rule of law. Important actions to prevent and combat corruption are also envisaged, including, in addition to the various pieces of legislation, the creation of an independent anti-corruption authority.
Citing police, she said there are currently 691 vacancies and 377 have already been filled. He spoke of a significant increase in police duties due to the pandemic and the implementation of the measures, while referring to corruption in the Police Department said that the Internal Audit Service investigated last year 126 complaints involving 67 police officers, but only four were prosecuted while another one was pending.
As far as the prisons are concerned, Mrs. Yoliti said that a process of reforming prisoners is under way, through the design and implementation of a modern correctional policy, inspired by respect for human dignity and human rights. "In this spirit, we are promoting," he said, "the creation of "Half way houses", which are a model model of a system for the reintegration of released persons into society. In this house they will remain released until they find work and reintegrate into society."
As far as judicial reform is concerned, Mrs. Yoliti said this was the biggest work under way and added that 1/7/2021 the new courts should work (Court of Appeal, new Supreme Court).
The justice minister in response to questions from MPs made it clear that in 2021 no state sponsorship will be given to women's organisations that will not update their accounts and fail to comply with the legislation. He reiterated that he is in favour of reducing the guards of political figures and that the Report of the Chief of Police is expected after the risk reassessment that is currently taking place. Referring to the former Speaker of the House, Dimitris Syllouris, he said that he has a legitimate guard, because because of the recent events he has received some threats.
They'll take responsibilities where appropriate.
When the Natural Ized Investigative Committee completes a sufficient number of files and cases it will submit an interim finding to the Attorney General so that measures can be taken, the Attorney General, Giorgos Savvides, said yesterday, speaking before the House Finance Committee during the presentation and discussion of the Legal Service's 2021 budget.
This report by Mr Savvides was a response to questions from Members, adding that when it is considered that there is a need to revoke nationalities this recall will proceed to the Council of Ministers who will take the decision and where there are criminal or administrative responsibilities they will be denounced and forwarded to the Police. The Attorney-General pointed out that in the event of criminal complaints with the findings of the ad hoc Kalogirou Commission "we immediately gave them to the Police, investigated and closely monitored the progress of the investigations. The same thing happened with the Al Jazeera publication,' he added.
He predicted that the Research Would take nine months to complete its work, since the law provides for so long. He added that in order not to have people wait for nine months for the result to come out and all of us to wait and in the end possibly gather many cases that have to be handled at the same time, we have discussed it with the Commission and it has accepted it and announced it, that they will send to the Office of the Attorney General, whenever they judge within the framework of their study and investigation. , interim reports, which will refer to cases which, in their opinion, consider that proceedings should be initiated to annul the grant of citizenship or whether proceedings should be initiated for criminal or disciplinary proceedings against anyone.
Any interim such report, he noted, would be handled by the Attorney General in the same way, i.e. by instructing the Police or the competent bodies to do what they should do and to the Council of Ministers, to raise the matter for study, so that cases would slowly and regularly come up and the procedure should proceed there and where it is considered that measures should be taken under the terms of the Commission's mandate.
Mr Savvides said that he does not monitor or have any ability to control the way in which the Commission conducts its work, but he knows that they are working fast. "I hope that once they have a significant number of cases that they have examined they will prepare me with an interim finding so that I can proceed to take those measures that I should take as I did with the Kalogirou finding," he noted, on the basis of which several cases are being investigated by the Police.
320 bills pending
Regarding delays in bills in the Legal Service, Mr. Savvides said that the number of new bills for which the Legal Service is required to do a legislative audit has generally increased.
According to him, this means that we will need more officers to be able to carry out this work. He said that upon taking office he and the Assistant Attorney General asked the Government to send them a comprehensive list of all cases pending both in a legislative audit, as well as in contracts and opinions "so that for the first time we can collect in a text all the outstanding issues that the Legal Service had before it, which did not exist in the past. We were sent a situation with about 320 loose ends," he said, while pointing out that there were things outstanding since 2010.
He stressed that the government was asked to evaluate them with a degree of priority depending on how important they were and based on this assessment made by the government departments we are moving rapidly to implement as soon as possible what are considered to be the most urgent, he said.
