Police in DC search for evidence against Chrysanthos

By Charlie Charalambous

A POLICE investigator was due to leave for the US yesterday to collect evidence against disgraced former Limassol Bishop Chrysanthos in the case of a missing $1.5 million of Portuguese investors’ money.

The investigation will mainly focus on Washington where the two investors said the investment deal was brokered.

Attorney-general Alecos Markides is hoping that crucial evidence will be gathered in the US, with the help of the local authorities, which would warrant legal proceedings against Chrysanthos.

Chrysanthos has already been charged with attempting to defraud a London-based investor of $3.7 million.

Although the ex-bishop faces a maximum three-year jail term under the charges, Markides has said the Portuguese case is a more serious one.

Investigators will be looking for proof that the Portuguese businessmen were victims of a scam and were not paid on their investment or had their initial sum returned.

Scotland Yard has issued an arrest warrant for Chrysanthos in connection with an attempt to defraud the London-based investor.

Under the island’s constitution a Cypriot citizen cannot be extradited, but if Chrysanthos left Cyprus the British warrant would be enforced by Interpol.

However, he is is blacklisted from leaving the island in view of pending legal proceedings.

Last month, the New York-based Securities and Exchange Commission filed fraud and broker-dealer registration violation charges against the ex-bishop’s US lawyer, Lewis Rivlin.

The SEC’s legal action, filed through the Washington DC District Court, claims that Rivlin defrauded investors of $6.2 million in a bank scam between December 1997 and June 1998.

As a relief defendant Chrysanthos is named in the court papers as having illegally received $4.2 million of that money.Chrysanthos resigned last November and was suspended from any religious duties for two years by the Holy Synod, after the church accused him of greed and profiteering through currency speculation, among other things.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.