Kikis Lazarides fails to show up in court
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Pambos Ioannides, a senior partner in President Papadopoulos’ law firm, denied Monday any knowledge of the activities of a number of companies that had alleged ties to former Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic.
Ioannides appeared in Nicosia District Court to answer to questions posed by Christos Triantafyllides and Soteris Drakos, lawyers for a Serbian businessman, Predrag Djordjevic, who is suing Laiki Bank and its former chairman in a claim that his offshore company was used in the 1990s by Milosevic and his cronies on the island as a front to launder millions through secret bank accounts.
Pambos Ioannides appears as the director of one such company, Antexol Trade Ltd., together with another lawyer from the same firm, Nairy Merheje, and also in the audited accounts.
However, he said that as the law firm of Tassos Papadopoulos & Co. dealt with many offshore companies at the time, he could not recall the activities of each one and did not deal with the day-to-day activities of the companies.
“These were the responsibilities of the administrative staff (of the law firm),” Ioannides said, when asked on several occasions if he had any knowledge about certain banking instructions for payments.
Ioannides also did not give any direct replies to Clerides’ questions about who had ordered the establishment of the company and who game instructions for the banking or other transactions.
According to a report by the Hague Tribunal investigating war crimes in Yugoslavia, Antexol was named as one of several companies that was an accessory to Beogradska Banka’s (also a Papadopoulos law firm client) activities in Cyprus to launder millions that were used to fund Milosevic’s armed forces during the war in Bosnia despite U.N. sanctions at the time.
Ioannides also told the court that Djordjevic tried to blackmail Laiki (also a Papadopoulos law firm client) and would expose the bank’s alleged involvement in money laundering if he was not paid about CYP 5-6,000 that he claimed was owed to him and lost USD 200,000 worth of deals because of this.
As regards an interview with Tassos Papadopoulos in the Politis newspaper four years ago about the setting up of front companies to evade the UN sanctions, Ioannides said that Papadopoulos’ comment were taken out of context.
The next witness in the case, former Laiki chairman Kikis Lazarides, failed to show up, because, as his lawyer, Kikis Talarides, explained, the court summons was not served on his client in time.
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