A Limassol accountant may have stolen as much as €3m from the group of companies that employed her, police told Limassol District Court as they applied for the renewal of her remand for another eight days.
The 49 year old woman was arrested earlier this month in connection with a case of forged payment orders of €1.3 m and the theft of €73,700 from her employer.
Police told the court that the woman was suspected of systematically siphoning off cash from the salaries of company employees and allegedly ‘created’ fake employees.
In one case the woman allegedly created a salary file for a non-existent employee over 18 weeks, taking €4,991 in this way. There are suspicions that the file in question concerns her son.
The court heard that police had managed to access files on her computer which the woman had deleted.
Moreover, checks carried out by an external expert who has gone through only 10% of all the cheques issued to the company’s suppliers found a number of cheques worth €204,00 for which there is no justification and for which there are grounds to suspect were forged.
Police investigators said that checks of the company’s bank accounts had shown transfers of more than €500,000 to the account of a relative of the suspect which are not justified.
From the audit now underway of the company’s books it appears more than €3m may have been stolen from the company.
The woman is continuing to maintain her right to remain silence. Defence counsel did not object to a renewal of her remand for another eight days.
Police are investigating conspiracy to commit an offence, theft by an employees, forgery, acquiring money under false pretenses and money laundering.
The alleged offences were committed between 2017 and 2020.
Four luxury cars have been impounded by police who are looking also at the acquisition of property.
