A MAN is in a critical condition after jumping off the third floor of a hotel room during a police raid.
The unidentified man, who is simply known to investigators as ‘Bobo’, was yesterday said to be in a critical condition at Nicosia General Hospital after plunging some 14 metres from the third floor of the hotel room.
The Cameroonian victim and his 27-year-old compatriot were allegedly embroiled in a forgery scam in which they would manufacture fake euros and Cypriot pounds for a fee.
According to investigators, the man panicked when undercover officers revealed their ID badges and ran to the balcony before leaping out of the room of the Cleopatra hotel.
An eyewitness yesterday said that it appeared that the man had tried to jump into the pool but missed.
Yesterday, the 27-year-old friend of the victim was taken before a Nicosia Court judge who remanded him in police custody for seven days.
According to CID Investigator Christos Tsiolis said that he was under investigation for forgery, circulating forged documents, obtaining money under false pretences, fraud, conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to commit a crime and illegal residence on the island.
“We had received a tip-off that a man of African origin was in Cyprus and could make counterfeit notes,” he told the court during the suspect’s remand hearing yesterday.
A first meeting was arranged at the Alexandra Hotel between the suspect, another man identified as Sandjo Symphorien and undercover officers belonging to Nicosia CID and the Cyprus Intelligence Services (KYP).
It was there that the suspect and Symphorien showed the officers, posing as potential clients, how to duplicate £20 notes.
A meeting followed on Sunday at the Cleopatra Hotel where the suspect turned up with the man simply known as ‘Bobo’. Symphorien was not present.
Once the suspect and Bobo finished showing the undercover officers how to make fake 50 euros, the officers revealed their ID badges.
“The suspect gave us a voluntary statement implicating himself to the crime,” Tsiolis told the court.
“He told us that he came to Cyprus on August 8 this year and met Symphorien. The two soon became friends and it was Symphorien who told him that they could both earn themselves a lot of money counterfeiting notes here”.
Police have issued a search warrant for Symphorien who is still at large.
Nicosia CID have so far taken down seven statements and are set to take a further 18 said the investigator.
The suspect’s defence lawyer Stelios Cheimonas yesterday told the judge that he didn’t object to the police’s request saying that his client has already confessed.
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