More Cypriot ‘secrets’ found
More confidential Cypriot state documents have been found dumped outside a ministry building, it was revealed yesterday, the day after the chief of Cyprus’s police force handed President Tassos Papadopoulos the results of a police investigation into how state secrets had been left in trash bags outside the Health Ministry. A few days ago, a citizen found state papers inside files thrown away with garbage outside the Health Ministry and handed them over to the newspaper Politis. The editor, Andreas Paraschos, said the files, marked «Education Ministry,» had been turned over to the police. Government officials claim that the matter is the result of the previous government’s lack of a unified policy regarding the management of documents. Education Minister Pefkios Georgiadis said he had absolutely no knowledge of how the files came to be in the garbage and that none had been discarded from his own office. He said that when he assumed his post, there were no files there with secret documents. His predecessor, Ouranios Ioannidis, confirmed that he had not handed over any documents to Georgiadis and that the secret documents in his office had been destroyed under his instructions in the presence of two people. Police took statements yesterday from the ministry’s general director and other officials. Government spokesman Kypros Chrysostomides said yesterday that President Papadopoulos would release the report on the Health Ministry documents as soon as he had discussed it with the attorney general. Chrysostomides confirmed the discovery of more documents outside the Education Ministry.
