DEATH threats have been sent to the Electricity Authority (EAC) General Manger Costas Ioannou and Financial Manager Moissis Stavrou, EAC spokesman Tassos Roussos said yesterday.
He said the threats, particularly in Stavrou’s case, had come in the wake of electricity bills being sent out to companies linked to the recent EAC scandal.
The case first came to light when 71-year-old Michalis Masouras was arrested on suspicion of tampering with electricity meters and adjusting them to show lower readings in December last year.
Police investigations soon revealed that a number of prominent individuals and businesses were linked to the case, allegedly having paid Masouras to adjust their meters in order to pay less on electricity bills.
A list involving around 150 businesses was later published. The suspect got paid according to how many kilowatts of electricity he saved for the owner of the meter, police said.
Last week, the EAC started sending out bills to the people involved, requesting the actual amount owed, the Authority’s spokesman said.
“This is why I believe Mr. Moissis was targeted,” said Roussos, explaining that as this was a financial matter, the Financial Manager had to sign all the letters and bills addressed to those individuals involved, making him the easiest scapegoat for venting their anger.
“Naturally these threats cannot, and are not, being ignored and all measures are being taken to ensure the men’s and other employees’ safety,” he said, adding that extra security measures had been taken throughout the building, and that police had been called in to ensure the men’s safety was protected.
“On the other hand, we don’t really believe these threats are serious,” Roussos added. “In fact it’s all becoming rather ridiculous. We are an organisation working to make things right and to put things in order – we even have the law on our side,” he said. “But instead some extremists are behaving as if we’d done something wrong.”
Although he did not know how exactly the message had read, he confirmed it was a death threat that had been sent to the men’s mobile phones by text message sent over the Internet.
“But the police have told us it is hard, if not impossible, to trace who sent the message because it was sent over the Internet on websites that are tailored to SMS messages,” said Roussos.
He said it could be any number of people involved in the scandal, but that they could perhaps be narrowed down to a select few because not everyone had yet received their corrected bills.
“We only started sending out the letters last week, and so have not sent the entire bunch yet. Therefore, I believe, the suspect list could be reduced to a smaller number.”
But, he added, even then it would not be easy to trace the actual culprit of the messages, because he or she was not necessarily a person directly involved in the scam.
“It could even be a joke or a threat from someone who simply knows the person involved,” he said.
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