Education ministry probe over suspect tickets

An education ministry official is to be investigated following a report by the Auditor General that she bought airplane tickets for official ministry business from her husband’s travel agency.
The report was handed to Education Minister Costas Kadis on Monday.
The official appears to have not notified anyone of her conflict of interests nor did she invite a tender process before deciding where she would buy the tickets.
According to the report, the official was tasked among others with buying airplane tickets for former minister’s Kyriakos Kenevezos trips to Brussels when Cyprus held the EU presidency, from July to December 2012.
The Auditor General notes that in some instances the tickets were more expensive than the current market price.
The report notes that the official booked herself into expensive hotels at the ministry’s expense through her husband’s travel agency – with taxi expenses to get to the Larnaca airport.
No receipts regarding that expense were ever presented.
The cost of the taxi ride came to €120 each time, an expense the report described as “completely unjustifiable.”
“We will get to the bottom of this,” said the Education Minister.

 

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.