INDICATIONS are that common sense will eventually prevail and the House ethics committee will not release the full list of names of individuals and companies that had taken money out of Cyprus in the period preceding it haircut of deposits, as it had originally intended to do. The pleas by the banks’ association, the Chamber of Commerce, accounting firms and CIPA appear to have made some of the political parties change their views.
DISY, issued a statement on Thursday, saying the publicising the names would “serve the purposes of the ethics committee and would hurt the country.” Such indiscriminate disclosure had no place in a “well-governed state that aspires to becoming an international business centre,” the party correctly pointed out. Even more surprising was AKEL’s volte face. Despite announcing a few days ago that it would release the list, containing 11,000 names, even if the ethics committee decided against it, on Thursday it changed tune. Only the names of politically exposed persons would be made public.
This was a positive step, even though it remains to be seen what stand the rest of the crusading parties would take. The original idea was totally absurd. The list would have included 11,000 names of individuals and companies that had transferred funds out of Cyprus between June 2012 and March 2013, as if they had done anything illegal or improper. Even the claim of anyone being privy to insider information was not valid in 2012.
Yet deputies wanted to ‘expose’ people for engaging in normal, lawful money transfers and tarnish their reputations for no reason. Such action usually takes place in totalitarian regimes where there is no rule of law or respect for people’s rights. This blatant disregard for banking confidentiality has no place in a country that wants to promote itself as an international business centre and attract foreign investors. If the House does publish the list, it would drive away the businesses that stayed here after the haircut, because no company wants its money transfers being made public.
Deputies intend to apply this business of naming and shaming to all those who received bank loans on favourable terms or had bank loans written off. One list relating to Bank of Cyprus managers and directors was posted on a website on Monday, but the figures it provided made no sense. An admission of the inaccuracy of the data was the fact that the website subsequently deleted the names of the individuals that had supposedly been favoured. This is the danger of reproducing lists, without explanations. We saw it a couple of weeks ago when three deputies were accused of receiving favourable treatment by banks by the Greens leader, but once they had provided explanations it was clear this was not the case.
Indiscriminately, publishing lists of names without any explanations serves no purpose other than to suggest the guilt of people, the majority of whom had done nothing wrong. This should not happen in a democratic country that boasts the rule of law. Our lawmakers should be aware of this.
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