The anti-corruption authority on Thursday corroborated attorney-general George Savvides’ position that he never received three “corruption cases” from it regarding alleged irregularities at the Vasiliko natural gas (LNG) import terminal.

“What had happened was that, in the context of three complaints for which an investigation was conducted … although no acts of corruption were found, the authority found a violation of the provisions of the legislation, which imposes an obligation on witnesses who are summoned to testify to answer all questions put to them,” it said.

Pursuant to this, it said, it had asked Savvides to launch a criminal prosecution against the person who had allegedly violated the law, but that Savvides had “disagreed with the position of the authority”.

“Since then, with the relevant disagreement recorded, the matter is considered closed,” it said.

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Savvides’ position had been that he had been unable to launch any criminal prosecution because the European public prosecutor’s office (EPPO) had already launched an investigation into the matter in March last year, with national authorities unable to launch their own investigations once the EPPO had stepped in.

“If, at any point of its investigation, the EPPO deems that an aspect of a case under investigation does not fall within its jurisdiction, it informs the national authorities for any incidents that may constitute a punishable action, according to the respective national law,” Savvides had said on Wednesday.

The EPPO’s investigation was made public in July last year, with the investigation regarding suspicions of procurement fraud, misappropriation of EU funds, and corruption.

On Wednesday, it confirmed that it had begun to scrutinise the bank accounts of politicians, current and former state officials, and civil servants, and that it had uncovered “very interesting” evidence.

The EPPO said last year the investigation was prompted by an audit office report on the matter in January 2024 “regarding possible violations during the procurement procedure and the subsequent execution of the public contract for the LNG project.”

Deputy government spokesman Yiannis Antoniou had said at the time that since March 2024, the Cypriot authorities had been fully cooperating with the EPPO “so as to ensure an in-depth investigation is carried out”.

Meanwhile, he European Commission had last year demanded that Cyprus repay almost €69 million which had been paid in grants for the terminal.

The energy ministry received a letter from the European Commission which listed “possible irregularities which occurred during the evaluation period of the tender” for the construction project.

The commission’s letter, according to the ministry, “alleges two substantive violations”, the first being the criteria for awarding the tender [to the CPP-Metron Consortium (CMC)] in December 2019 and the second being the signing of the bilateral agreement upon approval of an additional €25m in funding in June 2022.

Cyprus signed the contract with CMC for the LNG project in December 2019. The entire project should have taken 22 months to complete.

Work had ground to a halt last year after CMC tore up its contract with the government to construct the terminal.

CMC had accused Etyfa of “bullying” and of leaving them to work “without proper or timely payments” for years.