Ex Anorthosis chairman out on bail

 

FORMER CHAIRMAN of Anorthosis football club, Andreas Panteli, was released on bail yesterday in Nicosia after being brought to Cyprus on a European arrest warrant. 

The 52-year-old businessman was arrested in the Bulgarian capital Sofia in connection with attempting to obtain money under false pretences and issuing bounced cheques and brought to Cyprus on Thursday evening. 

The Nicosia District Court released him yesterday after he posted a bail bond of €15,000 and ordered him to report to a police station twice a week and hand in all travel documents. He is due again in court on April 30.  

The former Anorthosis chairman was accused of embezzling hundreds of thousands of euros from the refugee team’s Champions League proceeds in 2008. The charges were dropped after a deal with the club’s board of directors, under which Panteli agreed to step down as chairman.

The scandal broke days before Anorthosis were set to play a crucial Champions League fixture that could have seen them go through to the last 16.

In January 2009, he made an unsuccessful bid to win back the chairmanship but lost out to his competitor. 

 

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.