By Charlie Charalambous
BESIEGED Defence Minister Yiannakis Chrysostomis said yesterday there was “nothing unethical” about being wined and dined by an arms manufacturer at last month’s Paris Air show.
Chrysostomis stepped into another damaging scandal when Politis newspaper reported that the minister had spent a week in Paris running up a £10,000 bill at somebody else’s expense.
It was joint manufacturer of the Aspide anti- aircraft missile system Oerlikon which picked up the tab for the minister and his eight-strong delegation.
Although Chrysostomis did not deny the report, he said the offer came after he had struck a deal with Oerlikon to purchase Italian-made Aspide missiles at discount prices.
“The offer came after the contract was signed and there was no suspicion of bribery or any underhand motive,” Chrysostomis told Politis.
Apparently, Oerlikon offered to foot the bill for the entire delegation when the minister balked at the high prices of a week in Paris for nine.
“The sales director of the company found us a hotel after the embassy could not manage to do so… we told him our concerns over the high cost and the company offered to cover the whole cost of the mission,” said Chrysostomis.
Questions are now being asked about why so many people went to Paris for so long.
Among the eight-member team which didn’t have to pay a cent for hotel accommodation was the National Guard commander’s wife, according to Politis.
Greek Defence Minister Akis Tzohatzopoulos also visited the arms fair at Le Bourget airport and reportedly stayed in Paris for 48-hours, not a week.
The Paris Air Show opened on June 12 and by its close was expected to have generated more than $13 billion in arms deals.
On CyBC radio yesterday Chrysostomis argued that Cyprus had benefited from his dealings with the arms company because the National Guard will now receive the Aspides at £4 million below the going rate.
“Under different circumstances the government would have paid the expenses for the trip,” Chrysostomis told CyBC.
He also cited the fact that he once gave back an expensive Mont Blanc pen to an arms company official lest it be construed as a bribe.
In his short tenure as Defence Minister Chrysostomis has so far managed to upset the Greek general staff over his gaffe about the S-300 missiles remaining in boxes on Crete, muddied the waters during the T-80 tank fuel fiasco, and been slammed for allowing the National Guard ammunition supplies to run low. He has been dubbed by one opposition Akel deputy as the “clueless minister”.
