The squabble between Akel leader Stefanos Stefanou and former auditor-general Odysseas Michaelides heated on up Tuesday, with the former calling for the disclosure of documents proving that he never interfered with the Vasiliko LNG project.

Stefanou responded firmly to accusations hurled at him by Michaelides, now the leader of the Alma party and running for MP in the upcoming legislative elections.

Michaelides earlier suggested that Stefanou was implicated in the Vasiliko scandal.

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched an investigation into the LNG import terminal at Vasiliko on suspicion of procurement fraud, misappropriation of EU funds and corruption. Meanwhile the project itself is half-finished, after the Chinese contractor walked out in July 2024.

The former auditor-general claimed that in 2024 Stefanou had urged the government to revert to a no-bid contract for the project, which other than being illegal would have ended up with a specific sub-contractor.

Supposedly this happened during a closed-doors session of the House energy committee.

But Stefanou was having none of it.

In a statement, the Akel boss warned that if Michaelides “continues to tell lies, I will ask that the confidential minutes [of the committee] be made public, so that we can see what was said there.

“It shall then be revealed that, for the sake of a few votes, and to satisfy what he thinks of himself – namely that he is the only incorruptible politician – Odysseas Michaelides is ready to smear people and trample on them.”

An outraged Stefanou also called on the then energy minister George Papanastasiou to state publicly whether he [Stefanou] had tried to pressure him in a certain direction on the Vasiliko issue.

“I ask Mr Papanastasiou to state if I ever phoned him or pressured him so that the project would be awarded to a specific sub-contractor…”

Stefanou recalled that three days prior to the energy committee meeting he had described Vasiliko as “a major scandal” and called on the anti-corruption authority to initiate a probe.

“We may not agree on everything,” the Akel leader went on, “but that does not mean we get to cannibalise one other.

“We shall fight those who opt for populism and toxicity. When it comes to matters of integrity and ethics, our answer is zero tolerance.”