Probe into CY demise about to get underway

Evie Andreou

Consultants KPMG, which were hired by Cyprus Airways (CY) to find a strategic investor will the first to be called by the ad hoc committee tasked with uncovering why the national carrier went bankrupt, the committee’s head Nicos Tornaritis said on Friday.

Tornaritis told the Cyprus News Agency that on Wednesday the committee begins its “serious investigation into the whole issue”.

Cyprus Airways was closed down in January, after 67 years of operation, after the EU Commission ruled that it should return some €66m in state aid.

The committee will start investigating decade by decade, starting at the beginning of 1980, Tornaritis said.

He added that all documents concerning the national carrier that were in the archives of Parliament will be given to MPs and they will also be made public so that the process was transparent.

The documents, dated from 1980 until 2015, include letters, reports, financial statements, budgets, minutes, and other documents on the company’s finances, assets, the purchase and leasing of aircraft.

Documents also concern Eurocypria, the charter airline subsidiary of CY set up in 1992, which ceased operation in November 2010, and the creation of the Greek-based CY subsidiary Hellas jet, which began operations in 2002 and ceased in 2010.

Tornaritis said that after KPMG, CY’s legal consultants would be called, followed by the former directors of the company, former board members and ministers “to be able that way to have a full picture on what took place and what went wrong in every time period,” Tornaritis said.

He added that documents had been requested from everyone involved and that during each session of the committee, representatives of the finance ministry and of the attorney-general’s office would be present.

“It is an arduous task; we are talking about thousands of documents and decisions” said Tornaritis.

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.