Israeli property developer Simon Aykut was on Friday sentenced to five years in prison, after having last week pled guilty to a total of 40 of the charges he faced related to the development and sale of Greek Cypriot property in the north.

The plea had been entered after a deal between the prosecution and the defence.

Of the initial 242 charges he faced, 60 are related to “fraudulent real estate transactions”, 60 to being in possession of stolen land, 62 to money laundering, and 60 to conspiracy to commit a crime.

He had been arrested while trying to cross from the north at the Ayios Dhometios crossing point in June last year and has remained in custody ever since.

At the hearing at which Aykut pled guilty, prosecution lawyer Andreas Aristides had told the court that “the case is unfolding in the context of the ongoing Turkish occupation of Cyprus, a consequence of the military invasion of July 1974, which led to the violent displacement of over 160,000 Greek Cypriots.

Speaking about Aykut himself, he said the accused is “a holder of Israeli, Portuguese and Turkish citizenship” and “was active in the occupied territories in the field of land development and real estate construction without having secured the consent of the legal Greek Cypriot owners”.

He said Aykut’s company, the Afik Group, “developed a series of tourist and residential projects which it offered for sale to an international audience”.

He said Aykut, through the Afik group, “participated in the construction and commercial exploitation of six large tourist complexes in areas such as Ayios Amvrosios, Trikomo, Gastria and Akanthou, on plots of land belonging to displaced Greek Cypriots”.

“No consent was given by the legal owners for any use of their properties,” he said, before going on to name the complexes as the Caesar Cliff, the Caesar Resort, the Caesar Beach, the Caesar Blue, the Caesar Breeze and the Caesar Bay.

These complexes, he added, cover 394,969 square metres of land, with a corresponding market value of just over €36 million.

Aykut’s lawyer, Maria Neophytou, asked the court for leniency, saying that her client had “acted after being urged by his son, in whom he had complete trust”.

She said Aykut’s role was “limited to formal administrative duties”, and that he “did not participate in the planning or execution” of the property development.

“A father’s love for his son cannot be transformed into a criminally punishable intent. The defendant was not the mastermind, nor did he have any motive for personal enrichment,” she said.

She also made reference to Aykut’s health, saying he is “in the last third of his life” and that he “faces serious health problems”.

Additionally, she pointed out that prior to his arrest at the Dherynia crossing point last year, he had had a clean criminal record, and cited his “admission of guilt and sincere remorse”.

Aykut’s sentence is not the first to be handed down, with two Hungarian women having in May been sentenced to two and a half years and 15 months in prison respectively after advertising the sale of houses in the north on their social media accounts and websites.

Meanwhile, a German woman remains in custody after having been arrested following a conversation aboard a flight with Elam member of the European parliament Geadis Geadi in which prosecutors allege that she admitted to selling Greek Cypriot-owned property in the north.

She has now spent more than a year in custody.