The file documenting the police’s investigation into the history of faulty airbags in Cyprus and their import into the country which was handed to the police on Wednesday “will be evaluated as soon as possible”, attorney-general George Savvides said.
He also waved away suggestions that the report had taken too long to be compiled and sent, saying that “for a police investigation to be carried out and conducted correctly, procedures must be followed”.
“Based on the volume of material delivered to the legal service, which is very large, I do not believe there was a particularly long delay. From our perspective, it certainly needs to be evaluated, evaluated correctly, and it will be evaluated as soon as possible,” he said.
Its submission to the legal service comes 15 months after a report conducted into the matter by an ad hoc committee recommended that criminal charges be brought against three people, with attorney-general George Savvides taking receipt of that report in July last year and handing it on to both the police and cabinet.
Now, it is expected that Savvides will study the police’s file and decide whether to proceed with prosecutions. It is also possible that he will request the police to conduct further investigations.
The potential criminal charges also relate to the cases involving Alexandros Lougos, who suffered life-altering injuries as a result of a faulty airbag in 2017, and of Styliani Giorgalli and Kyriakos Oxinos, who were both killed in accidents involving faulty airbags.
The issue of airbags stems from the production of faulty airbags by Japanese company Takata. The company’s airbags suffer a fault related to exposure to high levels of heat or humidity, which means they have a tendency to explode when released under such circumstances.
This explosion shoots the airbag’s metal inflator outwards and in the direction of the person it was designed to protect, potentially causing further injuries or, in some cases, death.