Filenews 31 December 2025 - by Vassos Vassiliou
The chaos that the Mayor of East Limassol, Mr. Kyriakos Xydias, found with the debts and in general the dealings of the former Community Council and now the municipal district of Agios Tychonas, was such that he requested and had a meeting with the Minister of the Republic, Mr. Andreas Papaconstantinou, who gave instructions to conduct an audit. The Ministry of the Interior is also aware of the situation that prevailed.
The Auditor General, asked about this by "F", stated that in the context of the audit that will be carried out, with the new year, officials of his Service will also go to the site in order to further inform and collect data/evidence.
Mr. Xydias, asked about this by "F", stated that, with the subordination of the community council of Agios Tychonas to the Municipality of East Limassol (in the context of the reform of the Local Government) it was found that debts amounting to about €8 million were pending. Of these, €5.2 million concerns debts to the Water Development Department. The Department supplied the former council with water, which seems to have not been paid, although the community council had claimed that the debts are, in a way, fictitious in the sense that it is a loss of water through the pipelines of the Water Development Department.
The rest indebted (approximately €3.8 million) are related to tax issues or are debts to contractors, suppliers of the former Community Council, and so on.
Asked whether those who think they have to receive claimed the money owed, the Mayor said that after the reform it was found that more than 20 lawsuits were pending against the former community council of Agios Tychonas, mainly from private individuals.
Answering another question, Mr. Xydias said that a few days after the reform he was informed by the state services that no audit had been carried out since 2008, something for which, as he indicated, a newly established Municipality had no responsibility. The state services asked for the whole situation to be checked, with the Mayor indicating that an audit should be carried out but this should have been done many years ago.
The Mayor stated that he had contact not only with the Auditor General but also with the Minister of the Interior, in an attempt to find a solution to a long-standing issue. The result of these contacts was the decision to carry out inspections, which, as Mr. Xydias mentioned, is not the job of the Municipality, which does not even have the mechanisms to carry out an in-depth investigation. As part of the investigations to be carried out, researchers were appointed to examine the management carried out by the community council in the period 2008-2020, while the Municipality, for its part, assigned auditors to examine the management of the finances of the former community council for the period 2021-2024. It is recalled that the reform was implemented from July 1, 2024.
It is worth noting that Agios Tychonas, due to the hotels and other tourist businesses that operated within its boundaries (and by extension the receipts that flowed into its coffers) was considered one of the richest communities and its staff was even more than the staff of the Municipality of Germasogeia. It is also worth mentioning that in the past the issue of irregular recruitment of our own had been raised. Something that led to an increase in the number of council employees.
As the Mayor explained, Agios Tychonas had operating expenses of about €3.5 million and revenues of €3 million, so it had a deficit. Mr. Xydias told "F", that with the measures taken by the Municipality, the municipal district of Agios Tychonas no longer has a deficit but the debts it inherited from the former community council are pending. He further stated that if a fund of about €3 million was not used by the Municipality of Germasogeia to close the holes created, the Municipality itself would face a problem of survival.
The Mayor said that the situation found by the newly established Municipality was difficult and complicated, but at this stage there is a trend of normalization due to the increase in revenues. "The demand of both the Municipality and me personally is to complete all the inspections and if anything comes out of them, it is a matter that will be handled by other authorities," added Mr. Xydias.
It is recalled that in a report of the Audit Office (April 2024) it was stated that in the period 2008 – 2022 the then community council collected rents of €4.6 million from five recreation centers which were built on state land and within the Beach Protection Zone, without a planning permit/building permit.
