By Ahmet Gencturk
ATHENS (AA) – A former Greek Cypriot education minister and a presidential aide were among those identified as collaborators with Czechoslovakian intelligence during the Cold War, local media reported Monday.
The Cyprus Mail daily cited documents from the Archives of Security Services in Prague (ABS) showing that nine individuals from the Greek Cypriot administration were involved with the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic’s State Security Service (StB). The group included a Communist Party (AKEL) lawmaker and a deputy police chief.
Among the identified collaborators were Harris Vovides, secretary to President Makarios III (1960-1977) and Spyros Kyprianou (1977-1988); Chrysostomos Sophianos, who served as education minister in the late 1970s; and lawmaker Dinos Constantinos. They worked with the StB during the 1970s and 1980s.
Vovides allegedly communicated with the StB with the president’s approval, likely to maintain favorable ties with Czechoslovakia, a key arms supplier during the Cold War.
Deputy police chief Pavlos Stokkos, however, was considered the most valuable agent due to his connections with Greek Cypriot intelligence and police, along with access to key records.
Stokkos also had contacts with those responsible for the security of embassies from countries critical to Czechoslovakian intelligence, including the US and UK.
“The intelligence service was so impressed with Stokkos’ work that in September 1981, they secretly took him to Prague, where the chief of the intelligence service, Karel Sochor, awarded him the Medal of the National Security Corps,” the report said.
Stokkos' collaboration ended abruptly in 1982, when it was reported that he had been working with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
The report also noted Czechoslovakia's interest in the Greek Cypriot administration, saying that “Socialist states long supported the independence of the Republic of Cyprus, opposed its membership in NATO, sought to remove British bases and used the Greece-Türkiye dispute over Cyprus to weaken Western unity. In pursuing this strategy, they also used their secret services.”