The supreme constitutional court has rejected an appeal by former Foreign Minister George Iacovou against an earlier administrative decision reducing his pension earnings, it emerged on Thursday.

Essentially the top court upheld a prior ruling by a lower court, which likewise found that Iacovou had belatedly filed a legal challenge to his pension cut. As such, the lower court had said the legal challenge was void.

Iacovou, 86, had served as a civil servant in the 1970s and 1980s, going on to do two consecutive stints as foreign minister from 1983 to 1993, and then a third term from 2003 to 2006.

The relevant law states that a person may file an appeal against an administrative act within 75 days of that act. In this case, the courts found, Iacovou had taken about eight months to appeal.

Iacovou maintained that he filed the appeal belatedly because he never received the first letter from the state treasurer informing him of the pension cut.

On February 10, 2017, he wrote to the government requesting retroactive payment of the amounts that had been already deducted from his pensionable earnings. For her part, the state treasurer said she replied by post on February 21, rejecting his request. The letter was sent to the mailing address that Iacovou had provided.

But Iacovou countered he never received that letter, and that he did not learn of the response until October 10 of that year.

Later, on December 8, he lodged a legal appeal. Given that several months had passed, his appeal was deemed to be void.

The top court said the burden of proof was on Iacovou that he did not receive the treasury’s letter. The treasury’s records indicate the letter was indeed mailed on February 21 “so it must have reached its destination two or three days later”.

The supreme constitutional court threw out the appeal and awarded legal expenses to the respondent, the state.