The state moved swiftly to revoke the passports of foreign investors who had been naturalised as Cypriot citizens unlawfully, according to the Nikolatos report. But serious doubts have now emerged about whether the effort to correct those original failures has itself gone badly wrong.
The day before yesterday, a businessman won a resounding vindication in the Administrative Court, where he had challenged the revocation of his citizenship. The court’s language was unsparing: his rights had been entirely disregarded, and the facts of his case had been distorted. The ruling identifies at least eight points showing that the state rode roughshod over due process for one purpose only — to strip him of his passport.
A cynic might say that the executive’s heavy-handed conduct in this case looks rather like an attempt to score points over the “sins” of the past. What is beyond dispute is this: correcting one mistake with another only adds another shameful chapter to Cyprus’s already sorry naturalisation saga.
Φ.Μ.
