Elsewhere, SIGMA’s disclosure of Soviet documents would have caused a political earthquake.
They detail the Soviet regime’s funding of AKEL in the 1960s and 1970s and the organisation of the party’s apparatus to gather intelligence for the KGB.
Here, they barely registered. We were apparently too busy with developments of far greater national importance: the fish tavern, Foullis’s sudden, overwhelming anguish over the Cyprus issue, and whether Fidias can bear the lack of progress toward a settlement.
The first issue with AKEL is the substance of these revelations.
The key issue isn’t the revelation itself, but the proof that a party that once had support from a third of the electorate was regularly receiving payments from Moscow while strictly following its directives.
That is the best example of political corruption.
That is exactly what it means when a political party receives foreign funding in secret, without disclosure, transparency, or the state’s knowledge.
Then there is the fact that the documents found so far cover just six years: 1961, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966 and 1973.
The logical inference is that the money also flowed during the missing years, which further disclosures will probably fill in soon. Otherwise, how did the Party keep going?
We are talking about half a million dollars over those six years.
Not in today’s money, but in the money of that era. In the 1960s, the average monthly salary in Cyprus was roughly $80, while the country’s annual budget ranged from $50 million to $70 million.
Add up the budgets for those six years—the figure for 1973 was $200 million—and the total comes to roughly half a billion dollars. Moscow’s money therefore amounted to 0.1 percent of that sum. Applying the same proportion to the combined budgets for 2020–2025 would put it at $74 million.
Relations may have cooled under the “traitor” Gorbachev, but transparency remained lacking. So, of course, did AKEL’s promotion of the positions of Putin’s regime and its oligarchs.
Long after AKEL’s shameful support for the seizure of Crimea—and, unfortunately, it was not alone—OCCRP disclosed a €15,000 donation to the party from one of those oligarchs. Its general secretary at the time, Andros Kyprianou, offered this unforgettable explanation: “Perhaps it was a way of thanking us for the resolution”—the resolution opposing sanctions on Moscow.
But, he added, “They did not give the money to me.”
There was another episode involving companies and €20,000.
These are the cases we know about. The ones others uncovered.
AKEL has consistently been a fervent mouthpiece for Moscow: from demands that Russian warships be allowed to dock in Cyprus to its systematic undermining of the EU’s role, its furious opposition to joining the Partnership for Peace and its resistance to any cooperation with NATO.
From protecting the cargo of the Russian vessel Monchegorsk, which was carrying the containers that ended up in Mari, to Moscow’s man, Comrade Assad, to opposing even efforts to strengthen Cyprus’s defense and cooperation with Israel, the United States, Europe, and, lately, even… Greece!
From spreading antisemitic claims about Jews supposedly wanting to buy up our country to the other conspiracy theories peddled by AKEL headquarters, where sensitivities run high about absolutely everything—unless the perpetrators happen to be Iran’s mullahs, the “poor” terrorists of Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist organisations, or the kind of ex-red totalitarian regimes cherished by our local comrades. Russia and the rest.
Clearly, much of this was driven by AKEL’s destructive obsessions.
The country did not go under in 2013 after their watch by accident.
Yet, given the party’s record and the weight of the revelations, old and new, can anyone blame a citizen who, whenever AKEL sabotages something in Cyprus, wonders whether these ideological obsessions come free of charge—or whether someone is paying?
And just how ethical is that stance, or the silence of AKEL’s leadership?
Postscript: AKEL’s “answer” was that the story had surfaced in 2000. Which is actually deceptive. The funding story in general was reported back then; the documents and evidence are brand new. Fresh as a summer breeze, as the Cool and the Gang song of my generation goes.
And since AKEL knows no shame anyway, it even went on the offensive, questioning “the timing” (sic) of the latest coverage, for which it expressed “surprise”!
Needless to say, it did not explain what was different about the timing. Obviously, because there was nothing different.
