Nicosia: Cyprus deputy police chief was sacked Monday after being implicated in leaking confidential evidence and bungling a warning from Interpol about hit men from Serbia.
President Nicos Anastasiades dismissed Andreas Kyriakou following a decision by the island’s attorney-general to launch a criminal investigation against the police official.
“Taking full account of the outcome of a report by three independent criminal investigators, with regret I decided to sack Andreas Kyriakou for reasons of public interest,” Anastasiades said in a statement.
The move followed an independent inquiry into police corruption which implicated Kyriakou.
Kyriacos was the subject of a nine-month probe that focused on police corruption and its handling of the July 2016 shooting of four people in the tourist resort of Ayia Napa.
Businessman Phanos Kalopsidiotis, off-duty police officer Elias Hadjiefthimiou and his wife Skevi were gunned down by an Albanian contract killer at an Ayia Napa restaurant.
The gunman, Yani Vogli, was killed by a fellow hit man, Aleks Borelli, who remains at large.
The inquiry found that before the slayings police had bungled a tip-off from Interpol in Serbia on the arrival of contract killers from Belgrade to murder Kalopsidiotis.
Interpol Nicosia had contacted one of the hit men by mistake.
The deputy police chief was the most senior police officer handling that information.
“Although specific and important information was received from the Serbian authorities, it was not approached with due gravity, either it was insufficiently investigated or not at all,” said the official report.
Cyprus police have a tarnished public image, with government officials openly accepting there are rotten apples in the force.
