GOVERNMENT spokesman Michalis Papapetrou announced yesterday that the Anti-Fraud Unit had uncovered two suspicious cases in which Yugoslav funds were channelled through Cyprus banks and transferred abroad.
But he distanced the country from responsibility, saying that there was no evidence that Cypriots had been involved in the transfer of funds, nor that any law had been violated.
“We are sending all relevant information and documents about these two cases to Yugoslavia,” he said.
“We cannot pre-empt the outcome of the investigations here and in Yugoslavia but the fact that these funds were accepted in Cyprus does not meaning anything,” he added.
The Anti-Fraud Unit concluded that Cyprus did not disregard its obligations to any international conventions in the evidence they had uncovered.
In an interview with CNN in Washington DC on Sunday, Foreign Minister Yiannakis Cassoulides also said that the evidence monitored by Cyprus so far, “is not appearing to be suspicious”.
But he added that only a comparison between evidence collected by the government and information in Belgrade would reveal whether any theft or fraud had been committed.
But in Nicosia, Papapetrou precluded the possibility that Nicosia legal offices were involved, and that the money in question was still in Cyprus.
When questioned, he said he had no information about the origin of the money, whether or not it came directly from Yugoslavia or the date of its transfer to Cyprus.
Cassoulides said last Friday that Cyprus had sent 25 cases of evidence to the war crimes trial in The Hague at the request of Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.
Cyprus is suspected of having served as a conduit for millions of dollars of Yugoslav state funds siphoned out of the country by former president Slobodan Milosevic. The authorities here have consistently denied ever doing anything wrong.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
