Second employee charged with misappropriation
A SECOND Archbishopric employee has been accused of serious felonies, in what is only a small glimpse at the dodgy dealings inside the Church at the turn of the decade.
This week a Nicosia court charged 35-year-old Ionas Alexandrou, an Archbishopric secretary, on three counts: conspiracy to commit a crime, extortion and concealment.
Alexandrou, who is a close relative of the Primate, joins Chrysostomos Philippou, 44, who faces the same charges. Philippou, also related to the Archbishop, had been the Archbishopric’s chief accountant at the time the alleged crimes were committed.
The elderly Archbishop Chrysostomos is an advanced state of Alzheimer’s and has long been out of commission, leaving the running of Church affairs to the bishops comprising the Holy Synod.
It is believed that most of the looting of Church property and assets took place during the time the Archbishop was still in office but was not coherent due to his illness.
Some cases involve outright fraud, while in others more subtle methods were used, such as giving certain people “special deals” on land purchases. Media reports have suggested the Church may be owed up to £20 million.
The probe into the misappropriation and mismanagement of Archbishopric assets began in earnest back in September 2003 on the initiative of Paphos bishop Chrysostomos, now the interim Church leader.
The purification of the Church’s finances is seen as Chrysostomos’ strongest ticket in the race to replace the Primate, for long a subject of much controversy. Church leaders are to meet in Switzerland early next year to decide whether the throne should be declared vacant, paving the way for elections to nominate a new Archbishop.
The extortion case was brought to light by a hotel manager, who reported to authorities that Alexandrou and Philippou blackmailed him into giving them £100,000, threatening to block an imminent deal with the Archbishopric if he did not.
The charge sheet reads: “From June 5, 1999 to March 2, 2000, the defendants, with the purpose of stealing £100,000, demanded from AP, the manager of a hotel chain, the aforementioned amount of money, otherwise they threatened to act in such a way as to avert an upcoming agreement between the hotel chain and the Holy Archbishopric involving the long-term leasing of [Archbishopric] land plots.”
The court heard how the businessman eventually succumbed to the threats, paying the two Archbishopric employees several thousands of pounds.
The trial has been set for March 23, 2006. Both defendants have denied the charges.
It took an investigative committee well over nine months to compile a mammoth 400-page report into suspect financial dealings inside the Church.
The report’s findings have been described as “mind-boggling”: dozens of people were named as potentially having been given “preferential treatment” when purchasing Church land. The names included former government ministers, mayors, senior civil servants and relatives of the Archbishop.
