Former minister Christodoulos Veniamin, a prominent figure of the Makarios establishment, has died. He was 94.
Veniamin had been admitted to a private clinic last Monday with kidney failure. He died on Wednesday afternoon.
His funeral will take place at the Ayios Nicolaos church in Engomi on Friday. He will be buried at Kato Moni, his birthplace.
A trained lawyer, Veniamin had entered the civil service during the island’s colonial days. He served in crucial posts during turbulent periods.
He served as Limassol district officer between 1960 and 1968 and later as interior ministry permanent secretary from 1968 to 1974.
In January 1975, he was appointed defence and interior minister, a position he held for 10 years. Between March 1988 and February 1993, he served as interior minister.
He was elected MP with Akel in January 1997, a position he held for four years.
Veniamin, viewed as a hawk by many, held the office of defence and interior minister during a turbulent period for Cyprus. He took office following the Turkish invasion, at a time when thousands of Greek Cypriots were displaced from their home.
He was reportedly the only minister who would not kiss Makarios’ hand when the cabinet would welcome him at the airport whenever the president returned from abroad.
Following the death of the president, Archbishop Makarios, in 1977, Veniamin stayed on and served under Spyros Kyprianou.
It was a time of little or no transparency when officials did not have to explain their actions. In an interview, a few years ago Veniamin admitted to turning a lot of Church land into housing zones to help it survive.
His stint in the government was also marked by several terrorist incidents, the most serious being the assassination of an Egyptian newspaper editor Youssef Sebai, in February 1978, that eventually led to the death of 18 Egyptian members of the armed forces during a firefight with the National Guard at Larnaca airport. Egypt and Cyprus broke off diplomatic ties for three years as a result.
At the time, Veniamin had offered himself, and was taken briefly, as a hostage, in exchange for the release of other hostages.
Another incident that shocked the island while he was interior minister was a car bomb in 1988 intended for the Israeli embassy in Nicosia that killed three, including the driver, and injured 16 on the bridge of Grivas Dhigenis Avenue.
Although out of the limelight for many years, Veniamin was among the six former state officials who won their case on Tuesday to be allowed to reclaim all of the multiple pensions due to them because they had held several government posts.
Back in January 2013 a law was passed which aimed to save the state cash by reforming and modernising the pension system by which multiple pensions paid to civil servants who had also served as state officials were combined into smaller amounts.
The six beneficiaries of multiple pensions had appealed against the law and on Tuesday won their case after the administrative court ruled the 2013 law as unconstitutional.
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