Paphos’ acting mayor calls on auditor-general to inspect municipality

Acting Paphos mayor Angelos Onisiforou on Tuesday announced that he had asked auditor-general Andreas Papaconstantinou to carry out an audit of the municipality.

“I informed the auditor-general that I have sent a letter from the Paphos municipality today. In the letter, I ask him to proceed with the required audits of the municipality. They know how to do their job well. Maybe they have some information themselves. I do not know,” he told television channel Ant1.

Audit office spokeswoman Yiota Michael said the office intends to begin an investigation, telling television channel Sigma that “we have received complaints here … in relation to the Paphos municipality”.

“We are processing. We are at the stage where we are processing the content of the complaints. We are awaiting instructions from the auditor-general as to how we will proceed. We confirm that it is an issue which we will investigate,” she said.

She added that she cannot yet say when any audit will start and end, or what it will entail.

“We are very careful. We do not want to expose any person … We will investigate and proceed with the appropriate actions, based on the auditor-general’s instructions,” she said.

Onisiforou’s letter comes less than a week after he took over the leadership of the Paphos municipality after elected mayor Phedonas Phedonos was formally removed from his role last Thursday, having been accused of domestic abuse and rape.

Phedonos’ suspension will end either when legal proceedings regarding the allegations levelled against him have concluded.

After Phedonos was suspended from the role, it was reported locally that the interior ministry had been “concerned” that 72-year-old municipal secretary Themis Philippides continued to perform his duties after being placed on pre-retirement leave last year.

The interior ministry’s director of local government affairs Antonis Economides had on Friday said that Philippides “should have been removed from his duties two weeks ago and taken his leave cumulatively”.

However, he said, the ministry “should now investigate whether during that two-week period, Philippides went to his office at the municipal building and performed the duties of municipal secretary when he should not have and signed any documents”.

The investigation comes after Phedonos had written to the interior ministry in January, requesting that Philippides be allowed to remain in post “for some more time”.

On Monday, Anastasia Routi-Eleftheriadi was appointed as the municipality’s interim municipal secretary. She will now fill the role until a permanent replacement for Philippides is found.

Allegations of rape against Phedonos resurfaced last week, when Paphos-based land developer Theodoros Aristodemou, of Aristo Developers, accused him of committing the crime around ten years ago, before giving a statement to the police.

Separate domestic abuse allegations, meanwhile, surfaced after social media personality Ioanna Fotiou, better known by her alias Annie Alexui, claimed to hold documents from the related to admissions of Phedonos’ wife Louiza Andreou to the Nicosia general hospital in 2017, which stated that she had been “beaten” by Phedonos.

Andreou has vehemently denied all accusations made against her husband, writing in a post on social media that “my family is being subjected to a coordinated attack”.