A MAN who as acted as chairman of the Competition Protection Committee (CPC) and the Cyprus Referees’ Committee was in court yesterday charged with fraud.
A similar charge of abuse of authority in the same offence was dismissed by Judge Alexandros Panayiotou half way through the trial.
The case revolves around the CPC’s handling of a lucrative television coverage deal between Lumiere TV Ltd and the Cyprus Football Association (CFA) in August 2004.
Police accuse Tselepos of falsifying documents with the intention of favouring the deal between the CFA and LTV.
Under the indictment, Tselepos is accused of committing forgery by falsifying the dates of a committee meeting from August 26, 2004 to August 18, 2004.
Yesterday, Tselepos took the stand under oath.
Addressing the court, he claimed there had been a mistake with the recording of the minutes of CPC meetings for that month and that “some people used this mistake as a way to make me look guilty”.
He also denied suggestions from the prosecutor that he had “acted in the favour of the CFA and LTV”.
Tselepos added that he personally investigated the matter after it became clear that the meeting dates “had been confused” and that a committee decision in late November, 2004 deemed that “a mistake had been made with regards to the dates of meetings”.
The deal in question outlined an exclusive agreement between the CFA and Lumiere – which owns local television channels LTV and Alpha – in which LTV and Alpha would have the sole access to local football matches until 2011.
The agreement was contested – with Antenna pioneering the objection – and the deal was eventually revoked.
The CPC meeting was published in the government gazette on August 20, 2004 with the meeting supposedly taking place two days earlier.
When news of the phantom meeting was exposed, Antenna Chairman Loucis Papaphilipou reported Tselepos to the police.
Papaphilipou later appeared as a witness and testified in the trial against him.
The current coverage of local football games is now based on agreements reached by the clubs themselves and television channels.
Most local televised football matches are shown by LTV, Alpha and MiVision.
International football matches are shared by local channels Lumiere, Nova Cyprus, Sigma and CyBC.
“If anything, my decision to look into the deal again literally pulled the rug from under the feet of LTV,” Tselepos said yesterday.
“Had we not allowed the deal to go through, there would not have been the opportunity for other channels such as MiVision to be able to get coverage of the games.”
Defence lawyer Efstathios Efstathiou and State Prosecutor Margarita Avraamidou are set to make their closing arguments on May 4.
Tselepos was appointed chairman of the CPC in December 2000 for a period of five years.
In October 2003, he was appointed chairman of the Cyprus Referees’ Committee – a quasi-judicial body of the CFA – but resigned on February 16 this year along with the other committee members.
