By George Psyllides
AKEL MP Irini Charalambidou on Tuesday questioned the customs department’s decision to ask the attorney-general to suspend prosecution of individuals implicated in a cigarette smuggling case in 2009 because they could not locate them.
The House Watchdog Committee discussed the matter on Tuesday and questions were raised about the handling of two cases by the customs department.
The MP said they were surprised to see a letter from customs asking for the prosecution of three individuals and a company to be suspended supposedly because they could not locate the defendants to deliver the charge sheets.
Petros Clerides, who was attorney-general at the time, wrote to customs on July 26, 2013, noting that “it is very strange that delivering the charge sheets was not possible” considering that it was a well known company and the individuals were very well known members of Cypriot society.
“Especially when one of them appears on mass media very frequently,” Clerides said.
Charalambidou said the customs department never resubmitted the case, as they told the AG they would do.
The case concerned 25,000 cartons of cigarettes seized in a warehouse in Tseri, Nicosia in October 2009.
It dragged on until the defendants paid some €350,000 and the case was closed.
Last week, Charalambidou said one of the suspects arrested at the time, was the same man detained in October 2015 when authorities found and confiscated19.5 tonnes of tobacco and 63 boxes with 10,000 cigarettes each from a warehouse in Aradippou.
The man, 37, served as a special constable when he was arrested in 2009. He was subsequently sacked from the force.
Charalambidou said they raised the matter because they felt the many excuses presented by customs to convince MPs that a Cypriot and five foreign nationals were responsible for the Aradippou smuggling was an assault on logic.
“If certain people know how to play the game and to exploit tolerance or find legal loopholes to settle out of court, we also know how to raise issues in committees with the aim of protecting public interest,” she said. “We need to be concerned about what is happening in this country and why there are accusations that Cyprus is an international cigarette smuggling centre.”
Green Party chairman Giorgos Perdikis said there were questions about how customs had handled the cases and the fact that there were apparent delays and the Legal Service and the police were misled.
“Criminal offences must not be turned into out-of-court fines in an arrangement that might benefit the state financially, but hurts it morally, legally and politically,” he said.
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