THE SECRET SERVICE (KYP) was behind last year’s theft of documents from the United Nations, Greek Cypriot and Turkish media have reported.
Daily Politis ran a story Sunday saying KYP was responsible for intercepting the emails of UN Special Envoy Alexander Downer’s aide. Parts of some 6,500-page documents were published by Phileleftheros and have been given extensive coverage by Antenna television channel.
Politis said the “clear goal” of the theft was to derail the ongoing peace talks. The intercepted correspondence apparently portrayed the UN as pushing for arbitration in the talks, and President Christofias as “resisting” these efforts.
The first leak occurred on September 10, 2009, coinciding with the launch of the second round of direct negotiations and just as the UN was set to play a more active role in the talks, the paper said.
“The UN Secretariat believes the Cyprus government was implicated in the largest theft of confidential documents in the history of the international organisation. And if the talks should fail, these events, along with others, will be considered in exposing the Greek Cypriot side for acting in bad faith,” the Politis report stated.
The paper said the story was packaged as a report originating from New York, to make it appear as if the UN itself were the source of the leak.
“It was clear that the leak was intended to prevent the UN’s active participation in the talks and damage Alexander Downer’s reputation,” Politis said.
A UN investigation into the incident found that Cypriot authorities were responsible for the theft. Politis said a team of investigators arrived on the island, and tracking the emails of Downer’s aide, discovered that the email account was illegally accessed on at least 11 occasions.
The UN team reportedly found that the email password had been cracked at the business centre of a Nicosia hotel. Advanced hacking software was found installed on one of the desktops at the business centre, the paper said, adding that the investigators traced the IP addresses of the computers that were used to illegally access the emails.
An employee working at the hotel where Downer’s aide was staying vanished soon after the secret documents were published, the Politis item said.
Moreover, the e-mails were accessed while the UN aide was out of the country, indicating that the hackers were aware of the aide’s movements.
The paper said the UN subsequently conveyed its findings to the government, calling for a probe.
Strong representations were also made at the time to the government. It is not known whether the administration has carried out any sort of investigation to this date – and there have been no official statements to that effect.
Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Commissioner for the Protection of Personal Data Toula Polychronidou, said no complaint regarding the alleged theft was ever lodged with her office.
Her office has not looked into the matter, she added. Asked whether the Commissioner could have launched an ex-officio probe, Polychronidou said: “Ex-officio probes are rare and happen in exceptional circumstances.”
Politis said that, contrary to popular (mis)perception, there was nothing in the leaked documents that could be used to blame Christofias’ handling of the talks.
It further suggested that part of the reason why the government has come out against the Downer ‘hearings’ at the House Institutions Committee is precisely to avoid any discussion that might expose embarrassing truths about the leak.
The leaked UN documents formed the material for a recently published book about the ongoing peace talks titled “Simademeni Trapoula (Marked Cards).”
And Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported Monday that Downer’s secretary had been duped by a ‘handsome’ Cypriot, who then broke into her hotel room and stole the UN documents.
UN spokesman Rolando Gomez declined comment on the incident or on whether the organisation had carried out an internal investigation.
However, he dismissed the Hurriyet story as “absolutely ridiculous… it is unsourced, unsubstantiated and undignified.”
