Orphanides said he had permission to take laptops

FORMER Central Bank governor Athanasios Orphanides revealed yesterday that a pair of laptop hard drives he has been accused of not returning to the regulator, were in fact removed with the agreement of the bank’s IT officials.
The current Central Bank administration has been trying to retrieve the hard drives while ruling AKEL has accused the former governor of withholding data and documents belonging to the regulator.
Orphanides had always said that he had no documents in his possession belonging to the Central Bank and that the controversial drives contained his personal correspondence, which could not be deleted.
He said yesterday that they had been removed with the agreement of the officials of the regulator’s IT department.
The former governor also hit back at a report in AKEL’s mouthpiece Haravghi, which claimed that he, or members of his family, had refused to take delivery of a letter from the Central Bank demanding the return of the drives.
Orphanides wondered why the regulator chose to sent a private bailiff to his home in Lefkara when it knew he was in the USA and that he was represented by lawyers whose office was just 200 metres from the Central Bank building.
“It is sad that the new objective appears to be harassing members of Mr. Orphanides’ family,” a press statement issued by his lawyers said.

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.