Brussels, 13/02/2012 (Agence Europe) - In Athens on Tuesday, outgoing president of Cyprus, Dimitris Christofias, regretted the eurozone scepticism about the country's determination to clamp down on money-laundering after a report published on Wednesday 13 February by the Global Financial Integrity NGO said that large sums of dirty money flow from Russia to Cyprus.
One of the document's authors says “Cyprus is a laundry machine for dirty Russian money”. At the request of Germany, on Monday evening, the eurozone called for an independent audit on application of anti-money-laundering rules. Moneyval, a Council of Europe group of experts, found nothing out of the ordinary in its recent audit. In a press release, the Cypriot government said: “We hope that the attacks against Cyprus regarding a matter for which sufficient convincing answers have been given, should finally stop”.
Once this question has been settled, a way of making Cyprus' debt sustainable will be needed. On Tuesday, Euro Commissioner Olli Rehn said that the Commission was not working on private sector involvement for a writedown of Cypriot bonds along the lines of the Greek writedowns, a comment welcomed by the Cypriot government. (EL/transl.fl)