By Charlie Charalambous
A NICOSIA bank manager blew over £1.3 million of his clients’ money at the races, a court heard yesterday.
Popular Bank manager Charalambos Kokkinos, 35, was remanded for eight days by a Nicosia District court on suspicion of embezzling over a million pounds.
The court heard that Kokkinos syphoned some £1.3 million from deposit accounts and transferred the money to a bogus account that fuelled his betting habit.
Investigating officer Panayiotis Koundoureshis told the court that Kokkinos had admitted “to gambling the money on the horses and dog racing”.
The embezzlement, Koundoureshis said, was carried out at the bank, where only the suspect had access to accounts, over a period of two years between 1997 and 1999.
By the suspect’s own admission, police say he spent an average £12,500 a week of other people’s money on four-legged losers.
Dog racing is illegal in Cyprus, so police believe the bank manager made under-the-counter bets and followed the greyhounds by satellite from places like England.
The 35-year-old high flyer has confessed in a police statement that he accessed the bank’s computer system and redirected huge sums of cash for his personal use.
Kokkinos, married with children, lives in the up-market Nicosia suburb of Anthoupolis, but it seems his money-grabbing activities didn’t go on flash cars and ostentatious wealth but on the 3.45 at the race track.
Police said Kokkinos tried to cover his tracks at the bank by showing the money was going out as loans, but there was no record of any repayments.
An in-house audit on Thursday discovered discrepancies in customer accounts after a suspicious member of staff had raised the alarm. Kokkinos then allegedly confessed to the bank’s chief auditor, Yiangos Kleoppas and was arrested on Thursday evening.
Following the allegations, members of the Financial Crime Office were called in to investigate the extent of the fraud.
The Popular Bank said yesterday it was still trying to ascertain the total extent of its loss.
A spokesman for the bank said its customers would not lose a single cent from the scam, as the organisation was insured against theft.
Popular Bank is the second largest banking institution on the island and has branches in Greece and the UK.
