By Evie Andreou
CYPRUS Airways was a private company operating with inflexible civil service procedures, the head of the parliamentary ad hoc committee tasked to investigate the national carrier’s demise, Nikos Tornaritis, said on Wednesday.
The committee, which discussed in its latest meeting the developments during the period between December 2010 and August 2012, when Georgios Mavrokostas was the board chairman, called on the Auditor-general Odysseas Michaelides to investigate all claims of mismanagement raised during the committee sessions.
The audit service later issued a statement clarifying that it has the authority to investigate any private company which is any way controlled by the government.
“This, however, did not exist prior to 2014 and consequentially the audit service was never responsible for auditing Cyprus Airways,” the statement said.
Nevertheless, the service said it was willing to investigate any tender processes for planes or large purchases the airways paid for, provided the ad hoc committee provided the relevant documents.
The committee’s latest meeting, Tornaritis said, confirmed that “Cyprus Airways was a private company operating with inflexible civil service procedures”.
One board was reducing staff, while another was increasing it, he said, while among its serious problems were the exorbitant staff numbers and staff with high salaries.
The “negative influence of political parties” that were interfering with appointments of members of the board, was also illustrated, Tornaritis said.
Political parties, he said, “cannot operate airline companies”, just like they “cannot operate many other things”.
He said that in the past, he had asked Michaelides to refer a specialised audit company to investigate “everything that happened at the Cyprus Airways” but that the response was that such an investigation does not come cheap and that they need to evaluate its cost effectiveness.
Michaelides suggested that the ad hoc committee asked the cabinet to appoint an investigation committee, Tornaritis said.
The audit service, confirming Tornaritis’ claims over the independent audit company, explained that during the committee session on July 8 last year, deputies had decided they would continue looking into the matter and would send a report to the President and the Attorney-general.
The airline’s remaining board management periods are to be discussed during the next two meetings of the committee, Tornaritis said, and expressed hope that investigations will continue under the new parliament, as well as a report with “analyses, names and numbers”.
He called on Michaelides to investigate everything the committee heard, and the data that suggest “squandering of public funds”.
The Cypriot tax-payer lost many millions, Tornaritis said, and pledged that the committee will continue as long as it can “to find the truth”.
