The case against the 49-year-old German woman who stands accused of having sold Greek Cypriot-owned property in the north continued on Wednesday, with the “trial within a trial” related to the statement she gave to the police after being arrested in June last year taking centre stage.
The woman’s lawyers argue that the testimony she gave is inadmissible due to proper process not having been followed at the time, but the prosecution argues that she had spoken voluntarily after her luggage was searched.
The court has already found that the seizure of her luggage and the search of her electronic devices, was illegal, rendering the evidence “unconstitutional” and “impermissible”.
On Tuesday, the prosecution called a police officer from the cybercrime unit, who said she had conducted an online search on July 5 last year, and found the German woman listed as the chief executive officer of a real estate company called “Vepa Immobilien” on the company’s website.
She then produced a CD containing screenshots of the website, showing property for sale in the Kyrenia district village of Ayios Amvrosios, each of which was for sale for prices between €250,000 and €400,000, and for each of which the German woman was listed as the point of contact.
Next, the police’s assistant operations director Marios Papaevivriades said that he was also on the flight from Germany to Cyprus alongside the German woman and Elam member of the European parliament Geadis Geadi, as a result of which woman was arrested following a conversation with Geadi.
Papaevivriades told the court that Geadi had told him that the woman was “introduced to him as a real estate agent who sells real estate in the occupied territories”, and confirmed that photographs of the woman appeared on Vepa Immobilien’s website.
Defence lawyer Sotiris Argyrou argued that neither the CD nor the screenshots of the website were shown to the woman when she recorded her testimony.
The next two hearings have been scheduled for Thursday and Friday.
Three people have thus far been handed jail sentences since the Republic of Cyprus began initiating legal proceedings against people it accuses of illegally using, developing, and selling Greek Cypriot-owned property in the north.
Most recently, Israeli property developer Simon Aykut was sentenced to five years in prison, after it was found that complexes of which he had taken ownership and developed cover 394,969 square metres of land, with a corresponding market value of just over €36 million.
Previously, two Hungarian women were sentenced to two and a half years and 15 months in prison respectively in May after advertising the sale of houses in the north on their social media accounts and websites.
