Filenews 26 August 2021 - byChrysanthos Manolis
It took the Ministry of Interior two months and six days to prepare the list of all naturalizations of foreign investors approved from 2007 to 18/8/2020 and to send it to the Audit Office, which requested it in order to carry out its own audits on the Cyprus Investment Program in the near future.
Following a question we submitted, the Audit Office informed us that the list was received by the ministry on 16 August. The request for these data had been submitted through a letter from the Auditor General to the Secretary-General of the Ministry of Interior on June 10th.
"F" is informed that the Audit Office is already working on various options for the use of the list and has taken steps to organize various investigations. Among the priorities of the service is to cooperate with the Department of Lands, or other services, in order to investigate one by one - and not sampled - the investors who were naturalized through the exceptional procedure of the Citizen Service Center, in order to ascertain, among others:
- Which of them have alienated their properties, either by selling them or otherwise, in violation of the decisions of the Ministry and the criteria in force.
- How many of the houses that appear to have been sold to investors, as part of the investment for naturalization, have actually been transferred to them and remain in their own name.
- How many of the houses that appear to have been sold have actually been built and how many remain plots or fields.
- What are the total losses of public revenue from the irregularly reduced VAT rate charged or from transfers that were not made or completed.
And targeted surveys
In addition to the above controls, others will be carried out, targeted. We understand that, with the experience gained by executives of the Audit Service in the context of previous audits made for the Citizen Service Center, but also after the evaluation of the final findings of the Research Committee, some aspects of the investment plan or some individual decisions of the Council of Ministers or the co-competent ministries (Interior and Finance) will be selected and an audit will be carried out on specific - selected cases. Depending on the findings, these checks may be extended.
In order to carry out the targeted investigations, the Audit Office will periodically request from the Ministry of Interior the naturalization files for the cases under investigation, although it is the intention that the audits will be carried out as far as possible through computerized data, for greater speed and more productivity.
Asked whether the Police have contacted the Audit Office to draw on footage from its previous investigations into the Citizen Service (KEP), such as the cases of illegal naturalizations of managers or other executives of companies operating in Cyprus, the agency's spokesman, Marios Petrides, said that there has been no such communication so far from the Police and recalled that the Audit Office has made itself available to the investigating authorities.
