The president of the Republic of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, is having a rough week.
Christodoulides’s administration has been rocked by a corruption scandal involving allegations about improper campaign donations and a supposed cash-for-access practice at the top of the country’s political system.
The controversy has seen his chief of staff step down in recent days and the president’s wife leave a role in a charity foundation in the fallout.
Key figures close to Christodoulides, including a former government minister, were secretly filmed speaking about ways to evade campaign donation limits and how cash could buy access to the presidency, as well as suggesting the political system in Cyprus helped businessmen evade European Union sanctions on Russia and its oligarchs.
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The leader of one of the EU’s smallest states, an island geographically closer to the Middle East than Europe, divided by a 50-year conflict with Turkey that remains unresolved, Christodoulides insists his hands are clean and he has nothing to fear from the controversy.
An eight-minute video of secretly recorded footage, produced in the style of a documentary by an unknown source and released on social media, has caused a storm in Cypriot politics.
The video in question was first posted on an X account that claims to belong to an independent researcher named Emily Thompson.
The government has not denied the authenticity of the footage, but claims the clips were maliciously edited and spliced together, labelling the video as a “hybrid warfare” hit job. The footage captures figures close to Christodoulides on camera, who appear to believe they are speaking in private meetings.
A former supreme court judge has been appointed to lead an investigation into the controversy. The inquiry is to examine the circumstances of the recording, the origin of the video and who was behind it, as well as any possible breaches of the law by the individuals caught on camera.
The video was pushed out online just as the Republic of Cyprus took over the Council of the European Union presidency, an influential role brokering political compromises between the 27 national capitals and other EU institutions. Cyprus will hold the rotating EU presidency for the first half of this year, before passing on the baton to Ireland.
Cyprus has said a nefarious actor, possibly Russia, may be behind the sting operation, with the political meddling intended to damage the government as it assumes the important EU deal-making role.
Charalambos Charalambous, the president’s chief of staff and brother in law, who is one of the figures recorded in the video, stepped down shortly after the footage surfaced this week, but denied any impropriety and claimed comments he made were taken out of context and deliberately distorted.
Christodoulides, a centrist leader increasingly leaning rightward, made tackling corruption part of his election platform as an independent candidate in 2023.
The former career diplomat, who later became minister of foreign affairs, now has to convince his supporters that he will not be personally ensnared in any further fallout.
Outside observers quickly speculated that the video, and the politically charged timing of its release, looked like an operation that bore the fingerprints of Russia.
Cyprus previously had a cosy relationship with Moscow but pivoted closer to the US and the West after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking to The Irish Times and other European newspapers in the capital Nicosia this week, foreign minister Constantinos Kombos alluded to Russia being a possible culprit behind the video. “This has been something that has been planned and in operation for months,” he said.
Kombos noted how Cyprus had cut ties with Russia after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The government says it has shut down tens of thousands of Russian shell companies and bank accounts, which were known to have been a feature of Cyprus’s financial sector for many years and enabled Russians to keep their money offshore.
The shift towards western allies meant Nicosia was more exposed to being targeted, Kombos said, adding that an investigation was ongoing to establish who was behind the video.
Kombos said Cyprus would not be coerced into shifting away from its new direction of travel. “We’re not going to be distracted. In no case will we allow our foreign policy be dictated by such efforts of whoever is behind this.”
The aim of Moscow’s hybrid warfare is usually to embarrass and undermine trust in European governments. Difficulty definitively attributing the interference back to Russia is a feature of such meddling.
Allies of Christodoulides say a former energy minister’s comments in the recording were playing up their level of influence, in a small political system where everybody knows everyone else, rather than a smoking gun.
The investigation has been pressed to produce a report within three months.
However, even if the video is tied back to the Kremlin, the alleged corruption the covert recordings would appear to expose will harm the government and Christodoulides.
Two things can be true. Russia or some other malign actor may have orchestrated the sting, but the comments of senior aides, in their own words, still strongly allude to a practice in Cyprus where cash can be exchanged for high-level political access.
