The much-praised court case of the billboard scandal in the Municipality of Paphos ended in fiasco. The Criminal Court acquitted the accused of all charges as, as it was ruled, “their guilt was not proven, insufficient evidence was presented, while key witnesses were characterized by the court as unreliable”. In its decision, the court found, inter alia, that the testimony before it consisted of conclusions of witnesses which were based on an incomplete and unsubstantiated investigation. The Criminal Court also found that the Police did not conduct its own investigation into the case that was reported and was limited to taking statements. He also found that the system that existed in the management of the materials of the Municipality of Paphos was perforated. The defendants in the case were two advertising companies, their owners and directors and a former employee of the Municipality of Paphos.
The offenses faced by the defendants and the companies involved conspiracy to commit a crime, forgery, circulation of a forged document, embezzlement of money with false representations, theft and abuse of power. The license plate scandal concerned orders for the construction and supply of the Municipality of Paphos with road signs, worth hundreds of thousands of euros, without the approval of the Paphos Municipal Council. An internal investigation in the Municipality of Paphos conducted in 2012 had shown that municipal officials ordered materials for signs that the municipality did not need, worth hundreds of thousands of euros, while no one knew how much material was entering or leaving the local authority's warehouses. From the investigation of the internal auditor in the Municipality of Paphos, it was estimated that the municipality was charged an amount of over 300 thousand euros. The fraud, according to the report of the internal auditor, was committed in the years 2006-2012.
Unsubstantiated accusations and inaccuracies
The acquittal of the Criminal Court was based essentially on the arguments put forward by the defense attorneys of the accused, Savvas Matsas, Alexandros Alexandrou and Kostis Efstathiou. A total of 49 prosecution and 6 defense witnesses testified in the months-long court proceedings. The court accepted the basic finding that the system that existed in the management of the materials of the Municipality of Paphos was perforated, but, as mentioned in the decision, the acts or omissions with or without expediencies identified in the testimony, do not in themselves substantiate the components of offenses faced by the accused. The court acknowledged that there was mismanagement and a problematic material management system.
The decision states that the failure to keep records and the non-recording of the materials delivered to the accused companies did not cause any problems for any measures to be taken. The court also ruled that there was no independent investigation in the Municipality of Paphos, while the Police did not investigate the allegations of the accused for the supply of materials as they put it in their statements and this, as reported, is an essential part of the case. The prosecution is reported to have attempted without documentation, but with inherent contradictions, inaccuracies, and vagueness that crucially affect the persuasiveness that is expected to characterize the testimony of the case against the accused beyond any doubt, to involve their clients in the case without even be able to accurately calculate the amount lost from municipal funds to the benefit of companies.
