PRESIDENT Tassos Papadopoulos will announce his decision tomorrow to launch a criminal investigation into the phone-tapping device found in the Justice Minister’s office three months ago.
Justice Minister Doros Theodorou said yesterday on CyBC’s Face to Face radio programme that the president had decided to order an investigation on Monday. He said the decision was taken yesterday morning after a meeting with the president, the second they have had to discuss the issue.
The bug was found three months ago while private detectives were ‘sweeping’ the minister’s office, but its discovery was only announced last Tuesday. The government claims the bug is old technology and was obviously used in the past for a former Justice Minister. Theodorou initially told the media that the bug was “a ghost from the past” that did not require police investigation.
The leak of the news about caused uproar with the opposition who demanded further inquiry into the matter. DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades went as far as to claim that the entire affair had been masterminded by the presidential palace to justify sweeping transfers in the intelligence service, KYP, of DISY party supporters.
Despite the initial decision not to pursue an investigation in the public interest, Theodorou said yesterday this decision was reversed because of the persistence of the opposition and pressure from the media and public opinion in general.
The Cabinet will be responsible for appointing an investigator, and Theodorou insisted yesterday that the investigation would not be restricted to discovering who committed the crime but also when it took place and under what conditions.
He rejected outright the opposition’s claim that the affair was in any way connected to transfers in KYP and the police.
He also rejected Anastassiades’ suggestion that the presidential palace was the ‘brain’ behind the whole thing.
On a separate matter, Theodorou said in the radio interview that the cabinet was currently examining a new evaluation system for the public service. He refused to divulge any details, saying only that its implementation would overhaul the current evaluation system.
