A serious fraud has been exposed in Parliament: property owners are selling plots to unsuspecting buyers while concealing that the land has been requisitioned by the National Guard for defence purposes.
The chair of the parliamentary Audit Committee, Zacharias Koulias, described a situation that has persisted for years: ‘Someone buys a plot intending to develop it, and when they apply for a planning permit, the Ministry of Defence intervenes to say it is requisitioned,’ he explained.
According to a state official, tens of thousands of plots are reserved for national defence. The scale of the problem is such that compensating all owners would cost the public purse billions.
A telling example involves a 40-scala plot next to the KEN Anaritas training centre in Paphos, belonging to a family with two disabled parents. ‘If we need the plot for exercises, let us expropriate it,’ stressed Mr Koulias.
A bill is on the table requiring mandatory expropriation of every plot deemed necessary. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Defence is launching a digital inventory at the General Staff to identify all reserved properties and proceed with targeted expropriations around military camps.
New Local Plans will include a special marker informing prospective buyers that a property is encumbered, preventing them from falling into the same trap.
