By Reuters Staff
3 Min Read
NICOSIA (Reuters) - A grouping of world auditors say they are concerned that the Cypriot government is limiting examiners’ access to records from an axed citizenship-for-investment scheme that critics said was open to abuse.
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Cyprus scrapped the programme in November last year after the Al Jazeera news network filmed a senior state official allegedly offering to facilitate a passport for a bogus investor with a criminal record. The official involved denied wrongdoing, but the government said the scheme was flawed and open to abuse.
Before that, authorities had defended the initiative, which was popular with Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese and Cambodians. Critics, which included opposition politicians and transparency campaigners, panned the scheme as opaque and fraught with criminal risk of money-laundering.