Nicosia, Cyprus. Former president Nicos Anastasiades on Tuesday defended himself for more than an hour at journalists’ house in Nicosia against allegations cited in the anti-corruption authority’s report into the book Mafia State. The book was written by his former aide and journalist Makarios Drousiotis.
Challenge to allegations and source
Anastasiades questioned both the validity of the accusations and their source at the start of his address.
“Some people did not need the [report’s] findings to come to a verdict. They have had their verdicts for years. After the announcement, there was smearing, toxicity and character assassinations, and they turned the inventor of the ‘Sandy’ case into a hero,” he said.
The ‘Sandy’ case
The ‘Sandy’ case was a separate series of allegations made by Drousiotis earlier this year concerning a now 45-year-old woman, known only as ‘Sandy’. Drousiotis said she was raped and stabbed by former supreme court judge Michalakis Christodoulou and also claimed that Christodoulou fathered three of her children.
Response to the report
During the uninterrupted monologue, Anastasiades largely followed a prepared script, reading aloud from a document of more than 5,000 words. In the text, the word “slanderous” appeared five times and “slanderer” twice.
He addressed the anti-corruption authority’s report chapter by chapter, outlining what he said were the accusations against him and presenting his own account of events.
On multiple occasions, he said he had never been given the opportunity during the authority’s two-and-a-half-year investigation to dispute or explain the allegations made against him.
Press conference setting
The document from which he was reading was placed in front of him at the front of a press conference hall, where his voice competed with the sound of keyboards and camera shutters from photographers.
His voice was described as softer than in earlier years, in contrast with the deep voice heard six years ago when he warned journalists at Larnaca airport, “do not speak to me about Al Jazeera lest you be taken by… the demon”.
His greying hair and oversized jacket added to the appearance of an elderly man.