The Supreme Court has taken a historical and unanimous decision to dismiss Deputy Attorney General Rikos Erotokritou after a request filed in May by his boss, Costas Clerides, citing “conduct unbecoming”.
President Nicos Anastasiades, who appointed the deputy, is obliged to sack Erotokritou as the Supreme Court’s decision is binding.
The Deputy AG is reported to have said that he will appeal the ruling to the European Court of Justice.
This is the first time in the Republic’s 55 year history that a senior independent official, or judge, is dismissed, and could prove a precedent for other dismissals of high-ranking public officers, as Cyprus continues to be plagued by high-profile cases of corruption or conflict of interest.
Reading out the court’s ruling in the presence of Erotokritou, Judicial Council President Myron Nikolatos said that the application based on the reason of “conduct unbecoming” was considered by the court as so serious as to justify the dismissal.
The case erupted earlier this when Erotokritou reacted publicly to the conclusions of a criminal investigation by former judge Panayiotis Kallis, which found evidence of collusion between the Deputy AG and the Limassol law firm of Andreas Neocleous & Co that suggested mutually beneficial outcomes in unrelated court cases.
Erotokritou had filed a lawsuit for the offsetting of deposits seized in the March 2013 ‘haircut’ with debts over €500,000 to former Laiki Bank, which was then represented in court by the Neocleous law firm, according to the Cyprus Mail.
At the same time, the firm was battling the sons of deceased Russian businessman Oleg Zakharov, who had created a Cyprus-based trust fund – Providencia Holdings Ltd. The dispute was over control of the multi-million euro trust fund, with Neocleous citing a power-of-attorney document signed by Zakharov, and the brothers claiming their rights as sole heirs, the newspaper said.
After Neocleous’ lawyers failed to show up at the Erotokritou case in court, resulting in a ruling favouring the deputy AG, it emerged that he had instructed the police – in his capacity as deputy AG – to launch the criminal prosecution of the two Russian brothers and others associated with them.
These findings led Kallis to the conclusion that these events were the result of a conspiracy, and said as much in his report.
But after Clerides held a news conference to announce the report’s conclusions last April, Erotokritou reacted with a news conference of his own, where he launched a vicious attack on the AG and argued that the same logic that found his actions suspicious could well be applied to his boss’ actions.
