On 20 June 2022, following a complaint by the Directorate of the Prisons Department, the Attorney General of the Republic appointed Mr Achilleas Aimylianides as Criminal Investigator to conduct a criminal investigation. The investigation was completed and the Report of the Criminal Investigator was delivered on 15 September 2022 to the Attorney General of the Republic.
The study of the report and the accompanying material was, as is the practice, assigned to a team of experienced officials of the Criminal Division of the Legal Service, for the purpose of making recommendations as to whether it is justified and appropriate to initiate criminal proceedings against any person.
Having considered the publications in various media in relation to the complaint, as well as the conclusions of Mr. Aimylianides, we make it clear from the outset that neither Mr. Aimylianides, nor the officials of the Legal Service who studied the evidence before them, ruled or suggested that any corruption offence on the part of Mr. Katsounotos is established, in the sense that he intended to make a profit by any of his actions.
Mr Aimylianides said that he considered that Mr Katsounotos may have committed the offence of abuse of power under the first paragraph of Article 105 of the Criminal Code and the offence of conspiracy under Article 373 of the Criminal Code. Both of these offences are misdemeanours and are punishable by a maximum sentence of two years' imprisonment and/or a fine of €2,562.
Having established that this is not a case of corruption as explained above, the questions before us as a Legal Service are (a) whether any criminal offence is established, and in such a case (b) whether it is appropriate in the public interest to proceed with such a prosecution.
Mr Katsunotos served at the material time as Commander of the YCAN and Head of the Police Intelligence Management and Analysis Service. Mr. Katsunotos, as well as other members of the Police, appear from the material before us to have had personal knowledge in the performance of their duties of events at the Central Prison ("CP"), which we do not wish or deem appropriate to report at length herein. Suffice it to point out that the testimonial material of this criminal investigation shows that Mr. Katsunotos prepared, in an unsuspected time, a number of official reports to the leadership of the Police, in which he recorded the events of which he was aware, emphasizing the organization and execution of crimes within the CCs, warning of the dangers involved. In this context and in his capacity at the time, he had received information from a particular convict, following the convict's own initiative to contact him, that there were videos of intimate moments and videos of quantities of drugs inside the CFs. These videos, according to the informant, had fallen into the hands of people who could exploit them and/or were exploiting them by exerting pressure on the management of the CFs.
From the analysis of the material collected by Mr Emilianides, it appears that the motive in Mr Katsounotos' communication with this convict was to obtain information related to his duties and the possible commission of offences by persons within the CF. Analysis of the disputed messages, taken as a whole, appears to give a clear picture of Mr Katsunotos' true intentions, while their fragmentary presentation to the media distorts this picture.
In assessing the two criteria set out above, we were concerned, inter alia, with the quality and strength of the evidence gathered during the criminal interrogation. In addition to the above concerns, taking into account Mr. Katsunotos' motives for his actions, his efforts to prevent the commission of serious offences and the absence of evidence of an act of corruption, as explained above, we concluded that the public interest is not served by advancing a criminal case against Mr. Katsunotos. The public interest is not a general and vague concept, but is analysed on a case-by-case basis. As Lord Shawcross A.G. of England very famously said in 1951 "It has never been the rule -I hope it never will be- that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution".
Notwithstanding our conclusion above with regard to the criminal aspect, we consider that Mr Katsunotos' actions could be subject to disciplinary scrutiny in relation to the manner in which he communicated with the convict in question and the manner in which he carried out his duties.
We will therefore forward the necessary material to the competent authority to examine it and decide whether disciplinary action against him is warranted.
(MΛ)
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