Police on Monday formally registered a case against former central prisons director Anna Aristotelous, who is accused of illegally storing thousands of confidential documents at the home of a prison warden.
The case, which reportedly involves eight defendants including Aristotelous, was filed with the Nicosia district court following instructions from the attorney-general’s office.
According to local media, the case file includes allegations against five serving prison officers, one former prison officer – now serving in the police – and former deputy prisons director Athena Dimitriou.
The case was registered as the five active prison officers and the former officer, who had reportedly been suspended, were due to return to duty at the end of the week.
The investigation surrounding Aristotelous began in early April 2025, when police searched the home of a prison warden as part of a separate probe into an alleged scam involving a convict buying items from the prison canteen and reselling them to other inmates at inflated prices.
During the search, investigators seized some 300,000 pages of documents marked “confidential” and “secret,” believed to have been removed illegally between November and December 2022.
The documents reportedly include architectural plans of the central prisons, original files and signed copies, inmate dossiers, CCTV footage and correspondence between the Department of Corrections and other government departments.
Aristotelous was serving as governor of the central prisons at the time of the alleged unlawful removal of the documents, before leaving the post in late December 2022.
In late June 2025, cabinet suspended her from her post as acting permanent secretary at the defence ministry. During court proceedings, her lawyer, Christos Triantafyllides, said Aristotelous was being used as a “scapegoat” and would appeal the decision.
