Christofias now embroiled in overseas expenses row

A NEWSPAPER yesterday reported that President Demetris Christofias had requested, and is receiving, an overseas expense allowance, which his predecessors had shunned.

Daily Phileleftheros said that five months after his election, Christofias had asked for the allowance intended to cover government officials’ food and transport expenses when abroad.

The government said Christofias had never asked for the allowance and accused the newspaper of engaging in a war for the “political and personal annihilation” of the president.

The newspaper said Christofias’ predecessors had never asked for the allowance because all expenses are paid in most trips, either by the hosting country or the island’s embassy.

Phileleftheros also published the letter, dated December 2008, in which the presidency’s accountant is asking the public administration department to set an allowance for Christofias.

In its response three months later, the department said the president was entitled to the allowance that other officials like the House president also received when on trips overseas.

The letter added that Christofias would retroactively receive the allowance.

Christofias is in the top class when it comes to the said allowance, which is paid to officials without the presentation of a receipt.

For a trip to Athens for instance, officials in this class are entitled to €210 per day even if they have not spent a cent.

Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou said Christofias’ hands were clean and “the last thing the president can be accused of is squandering public money.”

A 1998 finance ministry circular, Stefanou said, defines overseas expense allowances for all government and parliament officials as well as all civil servants.

And because there was no reference to the president, the presidency’s accountant sought a clarification “on his own initiative,” Stefanou said.

“For Phileleftheros this is wrong apparently,” the government spokesman said. He added that it was the newspaper’s right to view it that way but it had no right whatsoever to “misinform and sling mud, saying that the president supposedly ‘asked for and is receiving an allowance.’”

“I want to make this clear, he did not ask,” Stefanou said.

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.