Police have yet to receive any notification or material concerning Makarios Drousiotis’s online funding campaign, despite Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou saying on Tuesday that the force had been asked by letter to examine whether it falls under fundraising legislation.
No police review has begun, as the information must first be received and assessed before any decision can be taken on possible further action.
Police say they have received nothing
When contacted at midday on Wednesday and asked about the status of the matter, police said: “It has not been received. Once it is received, it will be examined and a decision will then be taken on any action. We have nothing in our hands.”
Police therefore have not begun examining the campaign. Any next steps will depend on the content of the information eventually submitted.
What the interior minister said
Ioannou said on Tuesday that the fundraising campaign had come to the attention of the relevant department and that a preliminary assessment suggested it could fall within the provisions of fundraising legislation.
“As a matter of duty, the Police were asked to investigate it,” the minister said.
He stressed that referring the matter to police did not prejudge whether any criminal offence had been committed. If the review determines that the campaign does not fall under the legislation, he added, there will be no prosecution or charge.
Drousiotis: ‘This is not a fundraiser, it is crowdfunding’
Drousiotis rejects the suggestion that his online campaign is covered by fundraising legislation, maintaining that it constitutes crowdfunding and that he has obtained legal advice on the matter.
In a statement on Tuesday, he cited similar crowdfunding initiatives, referring specifically to a campaign involving APOEL, and argued that he was under no legal obligation to obtain a permit for his initiative.
Drousiotis reacted strongly to the interior minister’s intervention, describing it as an attempt to politically persecute and “destroy” him.
Ioannou responded that “the Interior Ministry is not pursuing anyone and does not seek to destroy anyone”, insisting that the referral was an institutional process intended solely to determine whether the relevant legislation applies.
Meanwhile, Drousiotis’s online campaign reached its €50,000 target in approximately 36 hours. Any separate police process arising from the ministry’s intervention remains pending until the relevant material is received.
