By Elias Hazou
A PARLIAMENTARY inquiry into the financial meltdown of March 2013 will likely name some but not all the names which the House ethics committee has come across during its investigations.
The committee is set to put the finishing touches to the final report and to the conclusions when it next meets on Wednesday. Lawmakers plan to debate the finalised document at an extraordinary session of the plenum on May 6, after the Easter break.
During a six-hour discussion of the report on Monday, MPs could not reach a consensus on whether to include in the report a list of some 6,000 people who transferred money abroad in the weeks and days prior to the Eurogroup meetings of March 2013.
Opposition AKEL want these names to feature in order to finger the persons who may have had inside information on the subsequent haircut on deposits. The party, moreover, warned that should the committee back away from this, AKEL would later reveal the names anyway.
But ethics committee chairman Demetris Syllouris (DISY) questioned the wisdom and value of releasing all the names; he argued that a lot of the names would by sheer coincidence match those of other people who did not wire money overseas or who had nothing to do with dodgy dealings.
The committee has a list in electronic format, and is to decide on Wednesday whether to put the list in writing in its final report. The full list will be regardless forwarded to authorities, who are conducting a separate criminal investigation into the economic collapse.
At any rate, the report will probably list the names of people – public officials, politicians, bankers, lawyers, businessmen – who are mentioned in other contexts, such as obtaining loans on favourable terms or having their loans written off.
It’s understood these names will not be redacted, and also that the final report in its entirety will be made public.
After himself raising expectations by declaring that the parliamentary inquiry would “spare no one and nothing,” Syllouris has had to dial down the rhetoric but has promised full transparency.
Among other things, the report focuses on: the fire-sale of the Greek operations of Cypriot banks in the wake of the Eurogroup’s bailout/bail-in decision; the sudden spike in Emergency Liquidity Assistance in the order of billions of euros within the space of 40 days after the state underwrote €1.8bn to float Laiki Bank in May 2012; banks’ bookkeeping and the possible inflating of assets; and potential conflicts of interest concerning law firms which banked with the same financial institution as clients who owed the bank money.
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