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29th March 2024
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HomeNewsAristo detention order extended

Aristo detention order extended

Theodoros Aristodimou of Aristo DevelopersTHEODOROS Aristodemou, the founder and CEO of Aristo Developers and former chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, Aristodemou’s wife Roulla, a former city civil engineer, and a female official from the technical department of Paphos Municipality were remanded for a further eight days by the Paphos District Court yesterday.

The trial judge accepted the remand extension from the police, saying that there were reasonable grounds for the suspects to remain in detention while police continued their investigations.

The fifth suspect, one of Aristo Developer’s architects, is due to appear in court again on Thursday.

Aristodemou made his first statement to the investigation team on Thursday after being discharged from a private clinic in Nicosia following treatment for high blood pressure. But according to reports, he refused to answer their questions.

Police are investigating conspiracy to commit a crime, conspiracy to commit an offence, receipt of revenue from illegal activity, forgery, circulation of a forged document, conspiracy to defraud, securing a document under false pretences, abuse of power with a false document by a public official and abuse of trust by a public official.

All offences allegedly took place between February 3, 2010 and December 28 2011.

Aristo Developers has denied any wrongdoing and believes it to be an “organised plot” against the family’s good name.

Meanwhile Paphos CID are investigating a series of threatening text messages that were sent to a journalist, a municipal board member and a Paphos Municipality employee on Sunday night. The messages, which were sent from a ‘pay as you go’ mobile phone, also threatened their families.

Rumours concerning Aristo Developers and the Bank of Cyprus are circulating and it seems likely that a formal announcement will be made later this week.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Mr Aristodemou has been reported as saying that he would cooperate fully with the investigation. Now he is apparently making statements to investigators, but refusing to answer questions. I wonder whether these are the actions of an innocent man. Does Cyprus have a right to silence provision?

  2. It looks like the Aristo affair could well open up the floodgates to tackle doubtless many other similar ‘situations’:

    Costas A is right: and those with similar likely charges against them will already be working on their ‘defence mechanisms’, including in many cases probably already intimidating and/or ‘persuading’ likely witnesses.

    But will Cyprus have enough ‘non-aligned’ ‘good guys’ to take on a myriad of other similar cases? Very unlikely?

    Interesting that BoC will it seems have to ‘show it’s hand’ on Aristo very soon. That one should prove to be particularly ‘interesting’!

    • MartynG on 2014/09/30 at 8:43 am – If you read the Trading Update and Preliminary Half Year Results for the period ended 30 June 2014 released by Dolphin Capital Investors Limited on September 23, you will find the following:

      “As indicated by the level of sales over the period, Aristo’s sales performance remains poor, putting a strain on the company’s cashflows. As a result, Aristo has prioritized its payments so as to ensure that its development programme continues on course, while it is making good progress in restructuring its bank obligations in a long term and sustainable way which will benefit both the company’s shareholders and its lenders – since such obligations are fully secured against land mortgages exceeding the respective loan values. To that regard, Aristo has already agreed the restructuring of its loan obligations with all of its lenders, except one – its major lender – with whom the company is in advanced discussions to agree a significant deleveraging of the Aristo group through a project level debt-to-preferred-equity conversion together with the re-profiling of the Aristo Group’s loan maturities and reductions in the interest rates incurred.

  3. ‘Spill the beans, tell the truth, then you and yours will be punished’, appears to be the message coming out from the usual cover up suspects when one of the usually immune and well protected species of Elites is threatened for once with facing justice.

    Time to stand firm, provide any witnesses with protection and push on through to a fair conclusion.

    The bully boys must be contained and defeated if Cyprus is to have any future at all.

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