Cyprus closes ‘black van’ probe as questions over Angelidis persist

Local corruptionIndependent Authority against CorruptionsurveillanceTop News Cyprus closes ‘black van’ probe as questions over Angelidis persist Aggelides Van Relevant News Cyprus closes ‘black van’ probe as questions over Angelidis persist 15 September 2026 Diego Armando Aparisio: Queer is what hasn’t arrived yet 15 September 2026 Back to the city: 20+1 spots to try this September 15 September 2026 Fanis Makrides 15 September 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber Cyprus’s Independent Authority Against Corruption has closed an investigation into the country’s “black van” surveillance case, after Attorney General Giorgos Savvides told it the matters it wanted to examine had already been investigated in previous years. Separate statements issued by the two sides on Monday leave open exactly why the probe was shut down, and the facts appear to contradict part of Savvides’s justification for it. Both sides agree on the basic sequence. Under Article 10 of the law governing the Authority, it notified Savvides of its intention to investigate the case substantively, to avoid running its own inquiry in parallel with any criminal investigation. When Savvides told the Authority the relevant matters had already been examined, the Authority decided to end its investigation. Blame game Beyond that shared account, the two statements diverge over who was responsible for the closure. The Authority’s announcement points to Savvides, noting: “After the Authority’s intention was communicated to the Attorney General, there followed an exchange of letters and a long meeting at the Law Office,” before describing the decision to end the probe. Savvides, for his part, maintains only that he informed the Authority the cases it had raised with him had already been investigated. He added that, on the basis of Article 10, the Authority decided to terminate the investigation into the “black van,” informing him by letter dated 8 September 2026. The classification dispute The two statements also leave unclear what the letters exchanged between the two sides actually contained. Both indicate the correspondence was marked “confidential” or “classified.” The Authority said it could not refer to any details, because Savvides had classified the correspondence as secret. Savvides, meanwhile, said the Authority had informed him “by a classified letter dated 16 July 2026.” He added that his reference to the Authority classifying the correspondence “was a result both of the confidential information it contained, and of the fact that the Authority itself had correctly classified its original letter dated 16 July 2026.” Article 10 The Authority’s announcement has also reopened a legal dispute over how Article 10 should be interpreted. According to legal experts, the only restriction the article places on the Authority is that it cannot run its own investigation while a criminal investigation into the same matter is under way with the prosecuting authorities. It does not give anyone the power to halt an Authority investigation outright. Legal sources told Phileleftheros that in the case of former EDEK leader Marinos Sizopoulos, police had carried out a criminal investigation and the Law Office decided not to prosecute. Years later, however, the Authority was still able to investigate Sizopoulos over the Taxan case, “concluding there were possible criminal liabilities.” The Angelidis gap The most striking gap in Savvides’s account concerns Deputy Attorney General Savvas Angelidis. Savvides confirmed he told the Authority that the matters it intended to investigate had already been examined criminally by the prosecuting authorities in the years after the “black van” case broke in 2019. But the timeline does not support that account. The criminal case over the “black van” ended with the conviction of the owner of the vehicle’s operating company, WsWispear, on 22 February 2022. That case could not have covered at least two separate matters involving possible conflicts of interest by Angelidis, since neither had yet been raised by the time it was under investigation. The “black van” case linked to a Forbes advertisement was registered on 16 September 2021, while Phileleftheros’s own reporting, which first raised the possible conflicts of interest involving Angelidis, was published on 17 September 2021 and 20 May 2023 respectively, after the criminal investigation had already concluded. The first matter involves Angelidis’s brother, Michalis Angelidis, who was a business partner of Israeli businessman Avraam Sachak Avni. The possible conflict arises because Savvas Angelidis was called on to decide whether to prosecute Avni at a time when Avni had previously been his brother’s business partner. The second matter concerns an administrative services company under contract to the law firm Angelidis co-founded, which had worked with companies in the surveillance industry. Both matters featured, along with other findings, in the book “Cyprus, the hub of surveillance,” which the Authority said on Monday was the subject of the preliminary investigation it has now ended. Savvides said in his statement that the Authority never told him it would investigate matters “that would concern the handling of the case [the black van] by the Law Office,” an apparent reference to the Angelidis conflict-of-interest matters. That conflicts with the Authority’s own statement on Monday, which said that, based partly on the new revelations in “Cyprus, the hub of surveillance,” it had decided to investigate “all incidents without exception,” and that it had informed Savvides of that decision. Phileleftheros called Savvides on Monday morning seeking clarification and also sent him a written message. He did not respond. His written statement was published afterwards, leaving the questions unanswered. 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