Paphos Municipality demolished Turkish Cypriot properties without authorisation and then applied to be granted them — one of a string of findings in a damning Ministry of Interior report that has landed on the desk of Interior Minister Konstantinos Ioannou, Phileleftheros can reveal.
The report was delivered to the minister a few days ago by Anthi Lakkotrypi, director of the Turkish Cypriot Properties Management Service.
It covers the municipality’s handling of Turkish Cypriot properties from 2015 onwards — the year suspended Paphos mayor Phedon Phedonos first took office — and is the product of an inspection team that carried out on-site checks last February.
The inspection examined 110 active lease contracts, 92 of which were either modified or concluded from 2015. They span the full range of Turkish Cypriot holdings in the area: premises, open spaces, monuments and agricultural land, with a large number relating to properties in Paphos town centre that the municipality was contracted to restore and repair.
The headline finding is a systematic conflict of interest. The municipality sat in a dual role — acting simultaneously as the planning authority ruling on citizens’ applications and as an applicant or interested party for the very same properties.
A recurring tactic was to acquire one property, then return with fresh applications for neighbouring or adjacent plots, citing broader planning needs. Officials of the Turkish Cypriot Properties Management Service were unambiguous about what this amounted to: “the way to secure additional properties” — needs that should have been anticipated from the outset.
The abuse of that position was methodical. The municipality demolished Turkish Cypriot premises without notifying or seeking approval from the Guardian — the Ministry of Interior — and then applied to be granted those same properties.
It secured properties for stated purposes and subsequently applied to change their use or sub-let them. Land granted for public benefit — parks and green spaces — was either left undeveloped for years or quietly repurposed in breach of contract.
In other cases the municipality collected parking fees from properties granted under preferential terms specifically for public use.
The findings are categorical on the breach of basic administrative principles: impartiality, transparency, good governance and equal treatment were all violated. A nationwide review of local authority lease contracts completed in early 2025 puts the scale in context: of 31 contract violations found across Cyprus, 18 — 58% — were attributed to Paphos Municipality alone.
Two cases are now under active police investigation. The first concerns the Mouttayiaka case: a 17,000 sq m Turkish Cypriot property that was sub-let to a private party.
The Audit Office examined it in 2023 on behalf of police, following instructions from the Attorney General, with then Auditor General Odysseas Michaelides flagging illegalities in October of that year. The second involves a recent large development in Paphos and centres on how a property entrusted to the municipality was managed and exploited.
The Ministry of Interior attributes the bad practices primarily to weaknesses in the previous legislative framework, which gave the Guardian broad discretionary powers without adequate oversight.
New legislation already in force has established clear objective criteria for managing Turkish Cypriot properties and closed the loopholes.
This newspaper previously reported that the Ministry terminated — in spring 2025 — a contract for 21,424 sq m of Turkish Cypriot land after the municipality failed to deliver on a project commitment for more than five years, and revealed correspondence in early 2026 between Minister Ioannou and the now-suspended mayor.
The Turkish Cypriot Properties Management Service has already terminated and recovered a number of leases from Paphos Municipality. A list of the recovered properties is to be published, with a view to allocating them to refugee beneficiaries.