Former volunteer commissioner Yiannakis Yiannaki was on Wednesday acquitted of five of the eight charges he faced regarding the forgery of a high school diploma, a university degree and a letter of recommendation.

He had already pled guilty in April to three charges related to the circulation of forged documents and the knowledge that they were forged when doing so, with the remaining five charges having related to the actual forgery of the documents.

The Nicosia district court found that it could not be proven that Yiannaki had forged the documents himself, and he was as such acquitted of those charges.

Ordinarily, he would now face a maximum of ten years in prison, but given that the case is being heard at a district court and not a criminal court, he cannot receive a sentence longer than five years.

Proceedings drew to a swift conclusion on Wednesday after prosecution lawyer Marina Masoura told the court that four prosecution witnesses would take the stand, for the purposes of saving time.

Judge Nicole Gregoriou, who had earlier in the week voiced frustrations about delays in the trial process, then asked Masoura directly why the witnesses were not there, before accusing the prosecution of employing “delay tactics”.

“The court’s time has been consumed exclusively by the prosecution since July 10,” she said, before telling Masoura that if the witnesses did not present themselves the same day, she would have to testify herself about whether there is a prima facie case.

A prima facie case is a case in which the evidence presented is sufficient to prove the existence of a case.

After a short break, Masoura told the court that the prosecution had decided to suspend the five charges, before presenting a report on the facts regarding the three charges to which Yiannaki had pled guilty in April.

Gregoriou then set the next court date for August 29, when defence lawyer Petros Stavrou is set to present his closing argument and call for a lenient sentence to be handed down.

Accusations regarding the veracity of Yiannaki’s high school diploma and university degree came to light, and he resigned from his role as volunteer commissioner in 2021 amid a media storm.

The case had drawn intense social media scrutiny, with pictures of crudely doctored documents doing the rounds.

In 2022, then police spokesman Christos Andreou had said that the San Diego State University, the university in the United States at which Yiannaki had claimed to have studied, said it had no knowledge of or ever even heard of him.

He said that the police had received oral confirmation from the university in question that Yiannaki never graduated from the institution.

A picture of his university degree, a bachelor’s in civil engineering issued in 1992, had been widely publicised, with the certificate bearing the signatures of four officials, one of whom is Edmund Gerald Brown Jr, cited as California governor.

However, Brown was not California governor in 1992, having served between 1975 and 1983 and then between 2011 and 2019.

Apparent tampering with Yiannaki’s high school diploma and his university degree, was discovered by the auditor-general of the day Odysseas Michaelides after he received an anonymous complaint about the issue.

Yiannaki changed lawyers twice during the case, with Yiannis Polychronis having walked out in November last year following a warning from judge Nicole Gregoriou about contempt of court, and his successor Thanasis Korfiotis having asked to withdraw from the case citing “ongoing disagreements” between himself and his client.