By Charlie Charalambous
FORMER Limassol Bishop Chrysanthos could be charged with fraud when Attorney-general Alecos Markides decides his fate next week. The disgraced bishop is likely to end up in court to face charges of attempting to defraud a UK-based investor of $3.7 million now that Markides has the full case file in front of him.
“A decision will be taken next week relating to the case of the $3.7 million. I can’t discuss procedure,” Markides told the Cyprus Mailyesterday.
In January, the Attorney-general announced that there was only a five per cent chance that Chrysanthos would not end up in the dock.
Markides yesterday confirmed that Scotland Yard had issued an arrest warrant against the ex-bishop — who has been linked to a handful of multi- million pyramid scams spanning the globe — in connection with trying to defraud a London-based investor from New Zealand.
“It (the warrant) cannot be executed in Cyprus as Cypriot citizens cannot be extradited,” Markides said yesterday.
Only if Chrysanthos tried to do leave the country could the British arrest warrant be enforced by Interpol, a police source said.
Chrysanthos is in any case on the stop list here in view of pending legal proceedings.
Last week, the New York-based Securities and Exchange Commission filed fraud and broker-dealer registration violation charges against the ex- bishop’s US lawyer Lewis Rivlin; Chrysanthos himself is named as a relief defendant.
The SEC’s legal action filed through the Washington DC District Court claims that Rivlin defrauded investors of $6.2 million in a bank scam between December 1997 and June 1998.
Rivlin is accused of selling at least $6.2 million worth of securities in a bogus trading programme to at least four groups of investors.
This included an Ecuadorean charity for underprivileged girls.
As relief defendant, Chrysanthos is alleged to have unlawfully received $4.5 million of the total $6.2 million of investors’ funds.
The SEC’s court action coincided with an admission by Chrysanthos’ successor Bishop Athanasios that the Limassol bishopric was £4 million in debt.
Chrysanthos resigned last November and was suspended from any religious duties for two years by the Holy Synod, after the Church accused him of a string of misdemeanours, including greed, and profiteering through currency speculation.
He had no option but to stand down before the Church instigated defrocking proceedings against him for damaging its good name.
The Chrysanthos affair came at a time when the Orthodox Church was reeling from other sleaze allegations, including homosexuality, sexual abuse of nuns and a married priest running off with a Romanian stripper.
The former bishop — who has recently sounded out his friends in the church hierarchy on cutting short his exile — currently enjoys a handsome £1,000- a-month salary, servants and a plush church residence.
Local police investigations into his business dealings have included countries such as Greece, England, Belgium and Spain.
