Assistant Auditor General Kyriakos Kyriakou has rejected suggestions that he is to blame for his limited role at the Audit Office, saying former Auditor General Odysseas Michaelides stripped him of his duties and shut him out of almost all of the office’s work. He was responding to remarks by Michaelides and current Auditor General Andreas Papaconstantinou at the House Finance Committee on October 30.
“I state categorically that I perform all the duties assigned to me in full,” Kyriakou said in a written statement. Any claim or suggestion that he did not want to work, or that he was to blame for being underused, was entirely unfounded, he added.
According to Kyriakou, the situation arose during Michaelides’s term. Michaelides removed the duties Kyriakou had held before Michaelides took office and excluded him from almost all of the office’s work, he said. Among other things, Kyriakou said, his access to official files was restricted, he was kept out of official engagements, and Michaelides refused to apply the constitutional provisions on deputising for the Auditor General.
Kyriakou said he had repeatedly warned the relevant institutions in writing of the serious risks this posed to the proper functioning of the Audit Office and to constitutional order, and had asked for action, but received no substantive response.
He also said he had repeatedly asked, first verbally and then in writing, for more duties, and more substantive ones, but had still had no reply to his letter.
The constitution provides for the Assistant Auditor General to take part in the office’s work without fully defining his duties, Kyriakou said. With no specific legislation governing the office, it falls to the Auditor General of the day to assign them, so responsibility for his limited role could not be shifted onto him, he argued.
Michaelides was now criticising as a problem “a situation which he himself created and maintained over several years”, which was at the very least contradictory, Kyriakou said.
He said he would not accept damage to his reputation over a situation he did not create, had repeatedly reported and was still seeking specific action to resolve.
(Information from Cyprus News Ageny)
