Our View: Rule of law must trump populism

The Transparency Commissioner, Haris Poyiadjis, who heads the anti-corruption authority, told the House institutions committee on Wednesday that an announcement about the ‘black van’ spying case would be issued on Monday. This was his response to a question by Alma deputy Irini Charalambides, who wanted to know whether the authority had completed its examination of the case involving the use of surveillance equipment by a black van belonging to security technology company WiSpear. Why had Poyiadjis given a date for the issuing of an announcement? Was it so he could stop the Alma deputy and others pressuring him for an answer about a case that was closed in 2021?

At the time the attorney-general decided to suspend prosecution of the WiSpear chief executive, Tal Dilian and two others and focus on the company, which pleaded guilty to several violations of personal data and was fined €76,000. WiSpear was also fined €925,000 by the data protection authority of Cyprus. In suspending prosecution of the individuals and pursuing the company, the attorney-general had exercised his constitutional authority in full compliance with the law. Anyone could disagree with these decisions and claim the AG had made the wrong choices in exercising his powers, but so long as these were lawful, they could not be overturned as some deputies have been demanding. In fact, a complaint was submitted to the anti-corruption authority in 2023, which sought the re-opening of the case and for the authority to carry out another investigation of issues related to the case. There was also an attempt to link this to the Predator surveillance case in Greece in which companies linked to Dilian were involved, although there was a marked difference between the two – in Greece there was surveillance of…