They squandered €38 million for fool’s gold, and there was neither harm nor foul. This is how millions – for which taxpayers pay with hard work and toil – are managed by a bunch of politicians and a few other highly paid bureaucrats from the ministries.
As if they were mere pebbles. Indeed, they are so brazen that they dare to appear in public and pretend to be economic gurus. They act like czars, calling on the common folk to tighten their belts even more. And this, after having tightened it so much in previous years that they can barely breathe.
The reason for the Finance Ministry’s admission the day before yesterday was that they distributed tens of millions during the pandemic to non-entitled recipients. The most outrageous part was the shameless admission that not a single administrative or disciplinary action was taken for this notorious negligence!
Certainly, as many of you may have read in various media and social networking sites, the admission, made in response to MP Eirini Charalambidou, refers to an amount of €13.8 million.
However, this column must correctly inform you about the crime in question. Because the painful reality is that the amount that was tossed away with the ease with which some throw napkins in a nightclub, when after 3-4 glasses the dance floor begins to groan, is €38 million!
You read that correctly. And this is not our discovery, nor is it unverified information. These are facts officially submitted to the Parliament by the Audit Office after a related investigation was conducted. In other words, it is an indisputable fact.
The revelations by Odysseas Michaelides about the scandal in question were dropping like bombs in Parliament last June, similar to the rate that which Israel bombs the Gaza Strip. The frenzied million-dollar party was set up during the pandemic, as part of a company support plan. Hold on and brace yourselves: €32 million was given to local non-entitled companies that did not meet the criteria, while another €15.99 million was given to foreign companies operating in Cyprus, without being entitled.
In the case of €32 million, no procedures were even initiated to recover the amount, while in the case of the foreign companies, €9,779,701 was recovered. The remaining approximately €6 million given to foreign companies were not recovered. €32 million was wrongly given to local non-entitled recipients and €6 million to foreign non-entitled recipients that were not recovered, totalling €38 million, went to the fool’s wedding.
The reality is that hearing about the new bomb dropped by Odysseas Michaelides last June, one faced two threats. Either to suffer a stroke from the sudden surge in their head and the last drop of blood in their body. Or to go berserk, grab a shotgun, and go out to vent and seek the irresponsible, flirting with securing a room (cell, it’s called) in prison for the rest of their life. We reject the second option, of course.
In total, €38 million were given in a mess to non-entitled recipients and were lost forever. If you can handle the other bombs, read on: The Auditor General revealed that the Finance Ministry submitted one plan to the European Commission and implemented another. Based on the plan approved by the Commission, the €32 million should not have been paid but was disbursed under a plan that was never approved.
If your brain didn’t explode and your stomach didn’t suffer a perforation, then let’s get to the essence of the scandal. Who will pay for all this loss? Who will be punished for this crescendo of alchemy? Who will return all these millions to the state coffers?
In the response to Ms Charalambidou, the Director-General of the Ministry of Finance, George Panteli, writes: “We note that no measures (i.e., administrative or disciplinary) have been taken against any official, as they were executing instructions from the former Tax Commissioner, who resigned from the public office he held, on July 2, 2020.”
In other words, Mr. Panteli pins the blame on the former Commissioner and covers up all the sloppiness and all the crime behind someone who left. Just like that. However, what about his responsibility as the Director-General, who was supposed to have all these millions under his control? What about the minister’s responsibility as the political superior?
Impunity remains a scourge in this place. And as long as citizens do not revolt and demand forcefully that such mistakes be paid for, nothing is going to change.
