CyTA land trial adjourned until March 28

By staff reporter

The case against seven suspects implicated in a suspicious land deal involving the pension fund o state telecoms company CyTA was adjourned on Friday to give time to the defence to study thousands of pages of evidence.

Defence lawyers asked Presiding Judge Nicos Sandis for time to study some 7,000 pages of documents that include phone records, bank statements, and records of an independent probe into the matter.

They also repeated they intended to request that their clients were tried separately.

Prosecutors had said they would object to separate trials.

The trial was adjourned until March 28.

The suspects are former CyTA chairman Stathis Kittis, former chairman of the electricity authority EAC Charalambos Tsouris, a member of the CyTA board at the time, AKEL official Venizelos Zanettou, the director of CyTA’s television arm and SEK union rep Orestis Vasilliou, CyTA employee Yiannis Souroullas and his brother Gregoris who works at the land registry, and businessman Antonis Ioakim, a shareholder in Wadnic, the company involved in the €20.5 million deal.

They have not been formally charged yet.

Charges include conspiracy to commit felony, fraud, theft, bribery, abuse of power, and money laundering.

The offences were committed between 2009 and 2013.

The land deal in question involved the purchase by CyTA’s pension fund of office space in Dromolaxia at a price several times the going market value.

Claims have since surfaced that millions were paid in kickbacks to make the deal possible.

 

 

 

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