Bank teller blew half a million on bets

A BANK employee who siphoned more than £500,000 from clients’ accounts and then blew it on football bets and horse racing was sentenced to two and a half years in prison yesterday.

Popular Bank employee Costas Constantinou, 26, had pleaded guilty at a Limassol criminal court to embezzling £520,000 by using a computer to transfer money into his own account.

Between April 1995 and January 1997 Constantinou, from Ayios Athanassios, transferred different amounts from accounts belonging to his relatives, among others.

Constantinou admitted using the money, from the Limassol branch where he worked, to fuel his gambling addiction.

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.