By George Psyllides
The chairman of the stock market investors association (PASEHA) charged on Tuesday that former Bank of Cyprus (BoC) CEO Andreas Eliades intervened to stop a regular column he wrote for a daily newspaper after a particularly damning article.
Michalis Olympios was testifying at the trial of five former BoC officials and the lender itself on charges of conspiracy to manipulate the market and mislead investors.
The court also heard that the system recording the controversial AGM where the offences were allegedly committed had stopped operating just after the first replies chairman Theodoros Aristodemou gave to questions concerning the salaries of the board and top management.
Olympios said the June 2012 AGM had been a tense affair and that no one had answered his question whether the bank would need state assistance.
He said the only responses he got were vague explanations.
The BoC board and management at the time are accused of lying during the AGM that its capital shortfall had been found to be €200 million, when in fact it knew the figure to be much higher.
The allegation forms the basis of the case brought against former chairmen Aristodemou and Andreas Artemis, former CEOs Eliades and Yiannis Kypris, and former deputy CEO Yiannis Pehlivanides, as well as the bank itself.
Olympios said the head of the lender’s IT was sacked after it was revealed he had deleted documents from the BoC records.
He also claimed that his regular column in Politis was cut at the behest of Eliades, following a damning article.
The chairman of PASEHA also testified that Kypris had told him that part of the AGM had not been recorded.
On Tuesday, the prosecution presented audiovisual material from the AGM, including Aristodemou and Eliades’ speeches. The recording stops abruptly after the first replies given by Aristodemou.
Police investigator Harris Avramides told the court he received two DVDs from BoC employee Evgenios Evgeniou who was operating the system during the AGM.
Evgeniou said that at some point he went to the toilet and after his return he noticed – at some point – that the recording had stopped.
Evgeniou told police that the system was antiquated and they could not prove that anyone had interfered.
Avramides said Evgeniou had been operating the system for years so they accepted his statement.
In his speech at the AGM, Aristodemou said the management could not have predicted the write-down of Greek debt, which resulted in a huge loss. He said it was in a strong position to overcome the economic crisis.
Eliades said the lender was close to completing its recapitalisation.
