One of the most high -profile trials of recent years has ended. The former volunteering commissar Yannakis Yannaki was sentenced to three years in prison for falsification of official documents.
In 1995, Yannakis Yannaki applied for a vacancy in the Youth Organization of Cyprus (Onek), where he was accepted in 1996. In 2013, President Nikos Anastasiadis appointed him commissar on volunteering. In 2021, Yannaki left his position after the Prosecutor General sent an official letter to the police chief in which he gave an anonymous certificate: the commissar de did not have a higher education at all, and the school certificate was falsified when placing a civil service, like a university diploma. In 2022, he was fired from Oneek. Although Yannaki stopped working in government agencies, he continued to receive a salary (1100 euros per month), since the youth organization feared court claims that could follow if they stopped paying him a salary completely.
The trial began in June 2022. At first, Yannaki did not recognize a single accusation. The trial was transferred and delayed several times. The defense tried to put pressure on public persons who urged to deal with the case as soon as possible, questioned the evidence base, accused the court of bias and even demanded to arrange a “court inside the court” about how exactly an anonymous certificate was received by the Prosecutor General. The result of this was the conflict of the lawyer and the court, which ended with the change of defender. The new lawyer, however, lasted only a month and a half and, as a result, the defender of Yannakis Yannaki again changed. After that, lawyers refused to represent Yannaki in court one after another.
The defendant was not at the meeting, citing the fact that he was sick. The court was even forced to call a doctor who issued Yannaki a certificate of illness in order to find out whether the patient’s condition really prevents him from participating in the hearings. The doctor’s testimony did not satisfy the judge who issued the warrant to his arrest.
According to the results of such a tense trial, the defendant was sentenced to three years in prison.
The text is prepared based on the materials of Cyprus Mail and Kasimerini.
