Cyprus’s Independent Authority Against Corruption has sent a report to Attorney General George Savvides recommending that MP and former EDEK leader Marinos Sizopoulos be investigated—along with three former business partners—for suspected offenses linked to the 2017 sale of a company used by an Iraqi investor to obtain Cypriot citizenship.

The alleged offenses include fraud, forgery, circulation of a forged document, and conspiracy to defraud. The Attorney General has referred the file to the Legal Service’s Criminal Division to decide whether the case will be assigned to independent criminal investigators or to the Police CID at headquarters.

At the heart of the case is Taxan Properties Developers Ltd, which held a non-performing bank loan of €2.581 million. According to the Authority’s findings, the bank had agreed to write off €956,900 if the remaining balance was repaid within a set period. Investigators say the company’s shareholders—among them Sizopoulos via his IO Ktimatiki Ltd—then sold all Taxan shares, together with its sole asset (a residential plot in Aradippou), to an Iraqi investor who sought naturalization through the Cyprus Investment Programme.

Two sale documents were allegedly used for different audiences: a share purchase agreement dated 4 October 2017 showing a price of €2.025 million, which satisfied the programme’s minimum investment threshold, and a second agreement dated 17 October 2017 showing €1.6 million, which was submitted to the bank to secure the agreed write-off.

The Authority’s report says there are indications the investor’s signature on the €1.6 million contract was forged and that the lower-price document was used to mislead the bank, yielding a financial benefit to the sellers (the 37% debt reduction and release from guarantees).

Sizopoulos has previously told police he did not know about the €2.025 million contract and that he was misled by a partner who produced the lower-priced agreement. The Authority disputes that, saying there are sufficient indications he knew the true sale price and the existence of the earlier contract. The Tax Department also treated €2.025 million as the sale price for capital gains tax purposes, prompting objections from two of the shareholder companies—including IO Ktimatiki—who argued the real price was €1.6 million.

The file returns to the Legal Service after an earlier round: in 2019, during the term of then Attorney General Costas Clerides, a report on the same affair was submitted; in July 2020, under Attorney General Savvides, prosecutors decided not to bring charges, citing insufficient independent evidence of the roles of those involved.

The case also appears in the Nicolatos committee report on exceptional naturalizations, which recorded the Taxan transaction, the bank’s 37% write-off, and noted gaps in banking proof of payment in the Interior Ministry’s file.

Any questioning of Sizopoulos now hinges on parliamentary immunity. Under Article 83 of the Constitution, an MP cannot be prosecuted, arrested, or imprisoned without leave of the Supreme Court (unless caught in flagrante for an offense carrying five years or more). The Legal Service has clarified that, without lifting immunity, even an investigative interview cannot proceed. If the Attorney General applies for immunity to be lifted and the Supreme Court agrees, investigators could take testimony and, if warranted, bring charges.

The debate revives long-standing calls to narrow MPs’ blanket immunity to acts performed strictly in the exercise of parliamentary duties. A constitutional amendment bill to that effect—first drafted under the previous administration and resubmitted in January 2021—still awaits the necessary majority in parliament.