THE assistant Attorney-general yesterday defended the authorities over accusations of delays in acting against a brokerage implicated in the disappearance of over £9 million from the Electricity Authority (EAC) pension fund which it was handling.
The CEO of Suphire financial services, Yiannos Andronikou, is currently in custody in connection with the case, while his wife, who was arrested on Sunday, was released due to insufficient evidence.
Police seized a large number of documents and computers on Sunday and Monday, though critics have suggested delays in moving in gave the company enough time to destroy or alter anything incriminating in their files. The case first came to public attention over 10 days ago.
Deputy Attorney-general Petros Clerides suggested there was insufficient when the case first broke to justify arrests.
“If we had made arrests, as many people who are now accusing us of dragging our feet, would have demanded what evidence we had,” Clerides said.
He added: “If after 10 days we haven’t succeeded in finding evidence justifying detention, how could we have done it 10 days before?”
Clerides was referring to the release of Andronikou’s wife Rea, who was released after a four-hour remand hearing on Sunday afternoon.
“It is their right to think like this, but those handling the issue, I think, know how to handle it,” Clerides said.
He said there was no point in issuing an arrest warrant if there was no evidence to justify remanding the suspects in custody.
“We had to collect evidence,” he added.
Meanwhile, Auditor-general Chrystalla Yiorkadji yesterday denied she had ever been offered to carry out an internal inquiry into the EAC’s handling of the matter.
It has been repeatedly reported by government officials that Yiorkadji turned down an offer to participate in the inquiry.
“The reality is that there was not specific proposal,” she said yesterday.
Yiorkadji said EAC chairman George Georgiades had briefed her service several days ago and during the discussion the authority’s intention to carry out an internal inquiry had been raised.
During the meeting, Yiorkadji suggested attention should not be diverted from the possible criminal offences and turned to accountability and disciplinary matters.
There was no proposal for the audit service to carry out the inquiry, she repeated.
Her comments were evidence of how difficult the EAC’s search for two independent public personalities to conduct the inquiry is proving.
Georgiades revealed yesterday that one person from the judiciary had been found, but it was hard to find one from the finance sector who had no links with the stock market bubble of 1999 and the crash that followed.
