THE TRIAL of the four suspects in the Aristo land fraud case, which was postponed on 12th January following a request from the defence council, restarted today at the Paphos Assizes.
The four defendants, Theodoros Aristodemou, his wife Roulla, former municipal engineer Savvakis Savva and Aristo architect Christos Solomonides, are accused of corruption and fraud in the alleged division of plots of land at Skali in Paphos.
It is alleged that the illegal division of the plots of land at Skali enabled Aristo Developers Limited to develop on a considerably larger area of land than the company would have legally been entitled to, gaining the company some additional €1.1 million in illicit revenues.
The four defendants are facing 32 charges. However the former municipal engineer, Savvakis Savva, is facing a further four charges relating to abuse of power. All four have pleaded not guilty.
Each of the four had previously been granted bail of €100,000 and surrendered their travel documents, while their names were added to a stop list so that they could not leave Cyprus.
Yes, what faith can anyone have that this trial in Paphos of a Paphos grandee by a Paphos judge will produce anything more than a typical Paphos whitewash, no matter what the strength of the evidence against him?
And then, we still have the Vergas case in the Paphos court and, yet to surface, likely cases against other Paphos developer grandees who seem to owe to the banks an awful lot of NPL money, some of which may have been acquired without proper bank scrutiny and due diligence procedures. I believe the investigation into the collapse of former Laiki and near collapse of BoC has unearthed some interesting evidence.
Well good luck trying to get it through the mountain of obstacles that will be put in the way.
I think many people have bits of land on their developments that they were initially told will never be built on or be green areas. Then miraculously they find permission to transfer the build quota from other land. And hey presto more buildings appear. Makes you wonder how often this trick is used to fool buyers.
To little to late I think
Thank Goodness this Hi-Profile case is finally getting under way, particularly as the Chief Defendant was at one time also Chairman of the Board of BoC
This may of course prove to be a ‘Tip of the Iceberg’ case.
I’m sure many of us will follow the Case over the coming weeks (months?) – for many reasons but not least to see how the Cyprus Justice system performs as, doubtless, many key issues will arise out of the proceedings.
I have absolutely NO FAITH in the Cyprus Justice System.This trial will go on and on and on and end up as a travesty. The main characters are pillars of the Community in Paphos and all these high falutin characters use the same pot. The trial should have been held in Nicosia/Limassol and made it look like they were trying to move it away from “home ground”.
See you in November (maybe)
Whose taking bets on: another adjournment, insufficient prosecution evidence, dismissal for medical reasons, contradictory evidence, Key witnesses not available, clerical error, documentary evidence lost, permits now materialised?
Yes and his company lied to my neighbour and us about a section of land in front of our development. Said it was earmarked by the local council for expansion of the cemetery, then a three storey high block was built on it, smack in our sea views. I say three because, although there was a two storey restriction they built a car park below it.