‘Nothing incriminating’ on seven CBC hard drives, police say

Police returned seven hard drives to the Central Bank (CBC) on Friday after it seized them in late May for investigations into a leaked list of MPs loan portfolios at the Bank of Cyprus.

The matter has put the CBC governor Chrystalla Georghadj under fire after independent deputy Zacharias Koulias, named on the list filed a violation of privacy complaint.

“Regarding information on the return of hard drives that were seized on May 26 and 27 in 2015, from the CBC, indeed, this morning, after police examined the drives, they returned them due to the fact that nothing incriminating was found upon examination,” the CBC said.

Police said investigations were still ongoing and they would submit their findings to the Attorney-general.

The list had been published by Politis newspaper on March 13, a day after former Central Bank board member Stelios Kiliaris told deputies on the House Ethics committee that he would be resigning his post, and claimed that Georghadji had told her board that she had been in possession of said list.

Georghadji rejected Kiliaris’ allegations, but the document appeared on Politis’ front page the next day.

Further complicating the matter, after the list which revealed the names of MPs with non-performing loans was leaked, the Bank of Cyprus conceded it had prepared the list, but only at Georghadji’s request.

When Georghadji flatly denied this, BoC retracted its earlier statement, saying the CBC governor had only asked for the list after its existence was made public in the press, but fell short of explaining why it had been prepared in the first place.

 

 

 

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.