Following revelations by Al Jazeera channel, four defendants will appear in the Nicosia District Court on Monday, 12 September. The defendants are former House Speaker Demetris Syllouris, former AKEL deputy Christakis Tziovanni, lawyer Andreas Pittatzis and Antonis Antoniou, one of the executives in Tziovannis’s company. These four are facing charges of conspiracy to defraud the state and untoward influence over public officials in violation of the law.
In the Al Jazeera video, the men told undercover reporters posing as representatives of a fictitious wealthy Chinese criminal that they were willing to help the criminal obtain a Cypriot passport for a price.
The investigation ordered by Attorney General George Savvides, after the Al Jazeera video, lasted more than a year. Testimonies have been taken and thousands of emails found on the computers of the four have been examined. The defendants will not appear in court directly for the naturalization program but for cases related to it, like their references in the controversial video.
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