Ex-Strovolos mayor denies €2m debt mismanagement claim

The former mayor of Strovolos denied on Thursday that he saddled the municipality with millions in debt on leaving office, as he and the current municipality continued trading barbs on the media.

In a statement, the current Strovolos municipality insisted that ex-mayor Andreas Papacharalambous had bungled a €2 million debt owed to municipal authorities by a private company.

Far from the debt in question having been reduced, it has grown to €2.3 million, it said.

This was in spite of negotiations undertaken by the former mayor.

The municipality also said Papacharalambous had taken the decision regarding the debt “without the approval of the municipal council” – suggesting the ex-mayor had acted arbitrarily.

It’s understood the debt to the municipality concerns unpaid entertainment tax.

The ‘decision’ cited in the municipality’s statement concerns Papacharalambous’ prior move – around the 2020 timeframe – to temporarily waive repayment of part of the debt.

Hitting back, the former mayor explained that he decided on this course of action because the company in question was in loan restructuring talks with the banks.

Had he insisted on full repayment of the company’s debt to the municipality as scheduled, the company would have gone bankrupt.

By cutting the company some slack, he argued, it was able to keep its operations going. Otherwise, the entire amount owed might have been lost.

The company has not been named.

Papacharalambous also blasted the municipality for supposedly leaking to media documents pertaining to the case.

The ex-mayor insists that the company was not let off the hook, “not even for a single cent”.

Papacharalambous, now running for MP on the Elam party ticket, suggested that the affair is politically motivated.

“The brutal distortion of truth and the attempt at misdirection from the real scandals of society, amounts to a cheap political stunt,” he asserted.

“The momentum of my candidacy with Elam for the upcoming parliamentary elections shall not be throttled.”