CYPRUS: Central Bank boss tastes her own medicine

The Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus, Chrystalla Georkadji, has finally tasted some of her own medicine, not as the keeper of the island’s treasury, but in the role she persistently kept for over a decade as watchdog of the state services and abuse of public funds.

Former Auditor General Georkadji has been chastised by her successor, Odysseas Michaelides, for doing what she has so fervently spoken out against – hiring staff in violation of public service rules.
Worse still, media commentators have suggested that Georkadji’s decision to re-hire a retired public servant as her personal assistant could not have come at a worse time, as the current economic crisis and continued cuts in the public sector would have preferred that an unemployed person get the job or someone else within the Central Bank move up, vacating another post in the job chain.
Ironically, despite the strict imposition of hiring controls in the civil service as dictated by the Troika of international lenders, the Central Bank of Cyprus is exempt from all austerity measures – it falls directly under the premise of the European Central Bank, a reality that the present administration knew all too painfully, as it tried to depose the previous centralbanker Paniccos Demetriades, eventually replaced by Georkadji.
Auditor General Michaelides is reportedly satisfied that Georkadji has promised to resolve the matter, probably suggesting that the PA, who had retired in January 2013, and the annual paycheck of 62,080 euros, will have to go.