Members of Parliament will ask to vote to approve the operation of the newly established Cyprus anti-corruption authority next Wednesday.
Yesterday, MPs reviewed regulations pertaining to the authority’s operation. Also, authority members replied to a series of questions by the House Legal Committee regarding the process by which they will handle corruption complaints and the storage of personal data.
They explained that data will be kept in the archives of the authority for up to six years and will be updated every six months. After six years, they will be encrypted and nobody will have access to them, the authority’s president and Transparency Commissioner Charis Poyiadjis said.
Poyiadjis said that all investigations will be carried out under complete confidentiality unless the complainant publicises the complaint against him/her.
He added that citizens will be informed in writing regarding the course of the investigation, six months after they submit a complaint.
Due to the fact that the regulations for its operation had not been approved, the Authority has not yet started investigating complaints, even though citizens and lawyers have expressed the intention to submit complaints against government officials.
Under existing provisions of the law, the island’s Commissioner for Transparency is able to make public interventions in cases where officials – no matter how high-ranking – come under investigation for corruption.
