Disgraced United States Senator Bob Menendez is to be stripped of his honorary citizenship of Paphos, the town’s mayor Phedon Phedonos said on Wednesday.
“We’re going to strip him of it,” he told the Cyprus Mail.
“I will table a motion at the town council, the council will approve the motion, and he will be stripped of his citizenship,” he said.
However, the other Cypriot honour bestowed on Menendez, the Grand Cross of the Order of Makarios III – the highest honour in Cyprus – remains in his hands for now, with the government having been caught off guard by a recipient later turning out to be a criminal.
“At the moment, we do not know what we will do about it. We do not have a process for stripping people of these honours,” a government source told the Cyprus Mail.
However, it is not the first time a recipient of honours of the Order of Makarios III has later turned out to be an unsavoury character.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was presented with the Grand Collar of the Order of Makarios III by then Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades in 2017, with Putin’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov receiving the Grand Cross in 2020, a year before Menendez.
Menendez was convicted on all 16 criminal counts he faced in New York on Tuesday, with the charges including bribery, obstructing justice, wire fraud, extortion and illegally acting as an agent of the Egyptian government.
He had helped steer billions of dollars in American aid to Egypt, with prosecutor Damian Williams describing Menendez’s actions as “politics for profit”. Menendez had received gold bars in exchange for the help he had given.
“His years of selling his office to the highest bidder have finally come to an end,” he added.
US District Judge Sidney Stein set Menendez’s sentencing for October 29.
He was given the Grand Cross of the Order of Makarios III by Nicos Anastasiades in 2021, with Anastasiades saying he was “particularly pleased” to do so.
Anastasiades praised Menendez’s “key role” in advancing relations between Cyprus, Greece and the US, as well as other neighbouring countries.
Two years later, he was made an honorary citizen of Paphos, describing the town as “the historic city of Aphrodite, Archibishop Makarios, Saint Paul and the Supreme President of the American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, Savvas Tsivikos.”
He said on that night that “49 years is too long” for Cyprus to be divided. He now faces a maximum jail sentence of 222 years.
