Combative Anastasiades fights back against Mafia State allegations

Former president Nicos Anastasiades went on the defensive on Tuesday, speaking for over an hour at journalists’ house in Nicosia fighting against allegations levelled at him in the anti-corruption authority’s report into the Mafia State book. The book was written by his former aide and journalist Makarios Drousiotis, and Anastasiades wasted no time in questioning the validity not just of the accusations, but of their source. “Some people did not need the [report’s] findings to come to a verdict. They have had their verdicts for years. After the announcement, there was smearing, toxicity and character assassinations, and they turned the inventor of the ‘Sandy’ case into a hero,” he said at the beginning of an address. The ‘Sandy’ case was a separate series of allegations made by Drousiotis earlier this year, relating to a now 45-year-old woman, known only as ‘Sandy’, who he said was raped and stabbed by former supreme court judge Michalakis Christodoulou. Drousiotis also claims that Christodoulou fathered three of ‘Sandy’s children. During Anastasiades’ hour of unbroken monologue, he remained largely faithful to his script, reading aloud a document which stretched to over 5,000 words, in which the word “slanderous” was used five times and “slanderer” twice. He went through the anti-corruption authority’s report chapter by chapter, each time outlining the accusations levelled against him as he saw them, and offering his own version of events. On multiple occasions, he stressed that he was never given the opportunity during the course of the anti-corruption authority’s two-and-a-half-year investigation to dispute or explain the allegations levelled against him. The document from which he was reading was in front of him at the front of a press conference hall, where his voice competed with the clacking of keyboards and camera shutters of the scrum of photographers. Anastasiades’ voice was not the deep and booming voice of old, which six years ago warned journalists at Larnaca airport, “do not speak to me about Al Jazeera lest you be taken by… the demon”. In its place is a softer voice which, like his now greying hair, clearly belongs to an elder gentleman, with a jacket which was too large completing the look of a man of advancing years. Nonetheless, he remains Nicos Anastasiades, and became animated when speaking about allegations of abuse of power included in the report which related to a case in which he allegedly requested that Mokas, the police anti-money laundering unit, launch an investigation into claims levelled against him by the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), with the aim of clearing his own name. “Did Anastasiades commit the crime of abuse of power because he requested the current investigation undertaken by the anti-corruption authority? Did the authority’s inspectors feel pressured because Anastasiades asked them to investigate him?” he asked, arms stretched wide. He added that “I consider it completely absurd and unlawful for it to be considered an abuse of power to request that publications which attribute acts of corruption against him to be investigated”. On this front, he also asked why the attorney-general of the day, Costas Clerides, was not also accused of abuse of power and dereliction of his duties, given that the report stated that Clerides “had the decisive authority regarding the adoption or rejection of Mokas’ findings”. “Did the former president also exert institutional pressure on the then attorney-general?” he asked. His reading of the document protesting his innocence came to an end with the sound of sound feedback, with the noise almost resembling a “mic drop”, popularised in 1980s rap battles. However, despite that moment, the event was only two-thirds done, with a question-and-answer session to follow. It was here Anastasiades was truest to form, taking questions from the journalists before him and treating each one as a sparring match. First, he was asked a string of questions one after another by one journalist, who, clearly dissatisfied with the answers given, continued to prompt and probe. Anastasiades, biting on his lip and furrowing his brow, eventually lost his patience, interrupting the journalist in return to ask, “but sorry, where did you see in the conclusions that there is corruption?” “The [former] president is accused of seven crimes which are not mentioned in the book Mafia State, I was not asked…” he said, before facing another follow-up question and cutting it off with “listen, if you actually want to be informed in good faith, listen to the answers, and if you want, believe them, and if you do not, stay with that which you have already decided to believe”. Then pressed on the matter of naturalisations given in exchange for money and the fact that some people have been denaturalised, he stressed that “it was my own government which began to recall [the passports]”. “Who said that responsibility should not be taken? Who said that criminal proceedings should not be undertaken against those who abused [the system]? Why was the programme cancelled in 2020?” he asked. He then said that half of the naturalisations which were cancelled belonged to people who were naturalised as dependents of investors, before, with another question coming in, saying “please, allow me, shall I answer or do you just want to ask and answer the questions yourself?”. “The decisions for dependents to become [citizens] was not taken by my government, but by the government of the late Christofias, Demetris Christofias in January 2011,” he said. He added, “I do not understand what relation the allegations levelled against me have with the golden passports and responsibility for them”, saying that “everything has been examined and answered for” on that matter. As he gathered his belongings to leave the conference hall, he was asked whether he planned to offer a “mea culpa” for the mistakes which were made during his ten-year stint as president, and answered that the journalists present “were not listening to what I was saying” and for that reason “did not hear that I actually said ‘mea culpa’ many times”.