The Alma Movement is speaking of a “new fiasco” involving the investigators of the “State Mafia,” launching a fierce attack against Nikos Christodoulidis and the government, in an initial reaction following Christos Mylonopoulos’s resignation from the five-member investigative team and reports from government sources indicating that Ilias G. Anagnostopoulos will replace him.

“Nikos Christodoulides must finally recognize his own conflict of interest,” Alma states in a press release, noting that “the latest developments surrounding the appointment of independent criminal investigators to probe the ‘state-mafia’ scandal confirm that the government and, above all, the President of the Republic still fail to grasp the fundamental issues of conflict of interest and institutional credibility.”

Even after the resignation of the first appointed investigator, as the Movement adds, “the government insisted that there was supposedly no conflict of interest whatsoever and attacked those who pointed out the obvious. Today, its own actions have proven it wrong. And yet, instead of learning from this fiasco, according to media reports, it is moving toward appointing Tal Dillian’s defense attorney in Greece.”

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“This is not someone who was once a criminal defense attorney and is now being called upon to serve in another institutional capacity. This is a practicing private attorney whose professional career has long been linked to handling high-profile corruption cases, some of which even have a Cypriot dimension, such as the defense of a Cypriot businessman in the well-known Tsochatzopoulos case and the defense of Leonidas Bobolas in the Kosia Landfill scandal. Above all, however, he continues to practice law actively to this day, including as Tal Dillian’s defense attorney in Greece in the wiretapping scandal. This is inconsistent with proper institutional practice, which requires, for such sensitive and high-profile investigative missions, the use of individuals who are no longer actively involved as defense attorneys in corruption cases and who will demonstrate complete institutional neutrality.”

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At the same time, as Alma notes, “the President of the Republic continues to insist that he himself will decide on the appointment of the investigators, even though his own conflict of interest is obvious. He served as a minister in the Anastasiades government, is a witness in the case under investigation, and his political career is inextricably linked to Nicos Anastasiades, whose political protégé he is. He cannot, therefore, be seen as a guarantor of the independence of this investigation.”