Police have frozen 51.5 million euros of assets derived from illegal transactions in recent years, with naturalisation cases accounting for the largest sums, the House Audit Committee heard on Thursday.
A police representative told the committee that half of the cases were linked to naturalisations, because offenders had bought property under the Cyprus Investment Programme. Among the assets frozen was a mansion worth three million euros belonging to Jho Low, a wanted businessman of Malaysian origin.
The committee was discussing an Audit Office report on how efficiently the banking sector is supervised to prevent money laundering. The police representative said the asset-freezing cases had been finally decided by the courts.
According to the figures he presented, assets worth 550,000 euros were frozen in nine cases in 2023, rising to 8.5 million euros across 26 cases in 2024 and 10.5 million euros in 28 cases in 2025. So far this year, up to August, assets worth 32 million euros have been frozen.
Answering questions from AKEL parliament member Christos Christofides, he attributed the rise to an increase in the number of cases stemming from naturalisations. He added that investigators trace assets in parallel with their criminal inquiries.
Christofides credited law enforcement authorities for the increase, but expressed dissatisfaction that during some more suspicious periods, some people “slept the sleep of the just”.
Shell company accounts closed
Kleanthis Ioannides, representing the Central Bank, told the committee that the bank had closed 42,000 bank accounts belonging to shell companies following its inspections, as well as a further 126,000 accounts for breaches of the law.
Risk assessment dates from 2017
The committee also discussed the report’s finding that Cyprus has been slow to update its National Risk Assessment on money laundering and terrorist financing. The last assessment was completed in 2017 using data from 2011 to 2016, so it does not adequately reflect later changes in the economic and financial environment.
A new assessment began in December 2025. The Audit Office stressed the need to complete it in time for Moneyval’s next evaluation of Cyprus in 2028.
Kikis Pafitis, speaking on behalf of the Finance Ministry, said the exercise had been seriously delayed by the sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine and by difficulty finding experts to carry out such a specialised review. He said sectoral assessments had been carried out in the meantime, and that a risk assessment on cryptocurrencies had also been completed.
The Central Bank described 2028 as a milestone year for Cyprus because of the Moneyval evaluation, and said the process will begin in March 2027.
