Allegations of perjury against Alma leader and former auditor-general Odysseas Michaelides resurfaced on Wednesday, with media reporting that letters have been sent to both the legal service and to police chief Themistos Arnaoutis demanding that he be investigated.

The allegations were first levelled by former audit office employee Andreas Hasapopoulos, who had initially been a close ally of Michaelides, even operating a Facebook group created in support of him in the years leading up to his dismissal from the post of auditor-general in 2024.

In the years preceding that dismissal, Michaelides had regularly found himself at odds with the legal service and much of Cyprus’ political leadership and often found himself accused of overreaching his duties.

The Facebook group was, ostensibly, created to counteract those accusations, running posts praising Michaelides’ character and work, while criticising his detractors.

However, relations between Michaelides and Hasapopoulos have soured in recent years, with Michaelides deciding not to allow Hasapopoulos to stand in the forthcoming parliamentary elections on the ballot of Alma, the party he established last year, reportedly citing the fact that Hasapopoulos is now in his 70s.

It was after this that Hasapopoulos became an open adversary of Michaelides, and accused him of perjury, saying that when Michaelides had testified in court during the case which led to his dismissal that he had never had any say in the posts which appeared in the Facebook group or involvement in its running, he was not telling the truth.

“My answer is that I have no connection whatsoever to the [Facebook group], nor could I decide what symbols or photographs were uploaded to it,” he had told the Supreme Constitutional Court in 2024.

Despite this, a reference to the group was included in the court’s decision to relieve him of his duties, with the court writing of “obscene content”, and saying that although the page did not belong to Michaelides, “it bore his name and photograph.”

The Facebook group was eventually closed down for violating the social media giant’s terms of service.

Those accusations were levelled in November, with Hasapopoulos saying that he has in his possession evidence of “direct and systematic communication” between himself and Michaelides regarding the group through messages on WhatsApp.

He claimed that the evidence included “ready-made posts”, thus contradicting the account Michaelides had given to the Supreme Constitutional Court, and potentially rendering him liable.

No action was taken regarding those accusations at the time, but news website Offsite reported on Wednesday that Hasapopoulos has now sent a letter to the legal service and to Arnaoutis on the matter.

The Cyprus Mail attempted to contact both the legal service and the police and received no response.

Were Michaelides be called to give evidence over the matter, it would not be the first time he has been asked to do so since being dismissed as auditor-general, after he was accused of holding the Supreme Constitutional Court in contempt in the aftermath of its decision to relieve him of his duties.

On that occasion, attorney-general George Savvides elected not to prosecute him, saying that while he had been presented with “sufficient evidence” to be able to go ahead and prosecute Michaelides, he had instead chosen to give him a “second chance”.

Michaelides launched Alma last year, and with a week and a half to go until the parliamentary elections, the party appears on course to be the fourth- or fifth-largest party in the new parliament, according to polling.