MOSCOW, March 28 - RAPSI. Cypriot Council of Ministers has decided that a commission comprising three former judges will look into the causes of the country's bank and economic crisis, the newspaper Phileleftheros reported on Thursday.

The investigative commission will be headed by Georgios Pikis, former president of the Supreme Court of Cyprus and former member of the International Criminal Court. The other two judges are Yiannakis Constantinides and Panayiotis Kallis, the latter known for his involvement in the investigation of the Helios Airways' Boeing 737 crash in Greece in 2005.

The commission will have broad powers to investigate the actions (or lack thereof) of the officials, the decisions that led to the current economic situation, and the activities of the banking institutions, particularly of Laiki Bank. The judges will review the responsibilities of bank officials in the public sector and at the Central Bank. The investigation will go back to 2006, when the banking problems first surfaced.

Two days ago, the parliament's legal committee addressed Central Bank Governor, Panicos Demetriades, asking him to provide the list of individuals who transferred money from Cypriot banks shortly before Mar. 15 when the financial and bank crisis broke out in Cyprus after the Euro Group decision. At a closed meeting of the legal committee, Laiki Bank board chairman Andreas Philippou and board members, Marios Hadjiyiannakis and Nicos Hadjinicolaou, declared "a big scandal and the transfer of billions of euros from Cyprus to Greece."