Jeroen Lenaers, Chair of the European Parliament’s committee of inquiry to investigate the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware, PEGA, said the Committee has received answers from Cypriot officials and will now “corroborate them” with other information at the Committee’s disposal.
A delegation of the committee, which is visiting Cyprus as of yesterday, on Wednesday held separate meetings with the Attorney-General Giorgos Savvides as well a joint meeting with the Minister of Commerce Natasa Pilides and Deputy Minister for Research, Innovation and Digital Policy Kyriacos Kokkinos.
“We had a very intensive exchange of view with the Attorney General (who) gave an extensive explanation as to his role in the legal system in Cyprus and what he could share about the investigation in the van case for instance,” the Dutch MEP said responding to questions by journalist following the meeting with Savvides.
“They were many questions from the colleagues in the European Parliament, he tried to answer them all and of course we need to discuss now among our colleagues what we do in the follow up of these questions,” he added.
Replying to a question whether the Attorney-General gave any details of the criminal investigation for a spy van in Cyprus, Lenaers said Savvides “gave the explanation that he could share with us.”
Asked whether he found the responses he received as consistent with their inquiry, the PEGA Chair refrained from commenting, stating that they’ve just finished the meeting.
“We need to of course discuss with my colleagues at the end of this visit, as well all the information received today by the Attorney-General but also by the Ministers and other people we spoke to,” he said recalling that they will also meeting with Committees of the Cypriot Parliament
“And we will take all the information we’ve received and we will check it with other sources of information that we also have to our availability and the we will come to our final conclusions which you will find in the report of the European parliament,” he said.
Responding to a question over their meeting with the Minister of Commerce and the Deputy Minister for Innovation, Lenaers described the meeting as “very interesting meeting,” noting that the Committee will discuss the meetings internally.
“I have to say from the Ministers’ point of view a lot of information was given to us, we’ve asked a lot of questions there were also one by one answered and now we need to see what to do with those answers and corroborate them in other ways,” Lenaers added.
The Committee which is visiting Cyprus in the context of an inquiry on the use of spyware in Greece, will visit Athens for a series of meetings on Wednesday through Friday.
Source: Cyprus News Agency