Cypriot Interior Minister Nicos Nouris on Wednesday, 26 August, at an official press conference, accused the Qatari TV company Al-Jazeera of intentionally trying to politically and economically harm Cyprus with its reporting on the scheme of acquiring citizenship for investment.

On Sunday, Al-Jazeera launched a series of reports on “investigating leaked documents in the media”. These were applications for citizenship under the investment program for 2,544 people.

“Over the past 24 hours we have witnessed an organized action by Al-Jazeera … which is attacking our country through misrepresentation and fraud” Nouris said at a press conference.

“We respect investigative journalism, but this is different… propaganda that deliberately targets the political and economic blow to the country”.

“Al-Jazeera is based in a country known for its pro-Turkish position … and is trying to impress the Republic of Cyprus with distorted and misleading information ” the minister added.

Nouris said that since its publication, the ministry has launched an investigation into 117 names published by Al-Jazeera.

“All the persons mentioned, whose names we will not name for obvious reasons, at the time of filing the applications, met the necessary criteria and had no criminal record in their countries of origin or residence,” he said.

In addition, the minister said, during the review of the applications, no evidence of their criminal activity was found by the competent state security services and Interpol.

Referring to the situation, Nouris noted that such a massive leak of secret government documents is worrisome.

According to him, instructions have already been given and control procedures implemented in all services related to the management and processing of specific documents.