The cabinet on Monday recommended that former prisons director Anna Aristotelous be placed on suspension once again.

The decision was taken during an extraordinary cabinet meeting, with ministers agreeing to submit a recommendation to the Public Service Commission (PSC) that Aristotelous be placed back on leave.

The move comes days after the Administrative Court annulled the PSC’s previous decision to suspend Aristotelous from December 5, 2025, pending the outcome of criminal proceedings against her concerning documents linked to the Central Prisons.

In its ruling, the court found that the cabinet was not the competent authority to recommend her suspension at the time, since Aristotelous was still serving at the Presidency when the proposal was submitted to the PSC.

According to the judgment, “on November 28, 2025, when the proposal was submitted by the cabinet, the applicant was still serving at the Presidency and had not yet assumed the duties of director-general.”

The court added that “the competent authority to recommend the applicant’s suspension was the Presidency of the Republic and not the cabinet.”

Speaking to Politis radio on Monday, deputy government spokesman Yiannis Antoniou said the cabinet had decided to resubmit its recommendation to the PSC following the Administrative Court’s ruling.

He said the government considered that the reasons justifying the recommendation for Aristotelous’ suspension remained in place, while stressing that the final decision rests with the PSC.

“The cabinet does not decide on suspension. The cabinet makes a recommendation to the Public Service Commission,” Antoniou said.

The court ruling had resulted in the cancellation of the PSC’s earlier decision to place Aristotelous on leave while the criminal case against her remains pending.

No official announcement had been issued by the government at the time of writing.

The investigation surrounding Aristotelous began in early April 2025, when police searched the home of a prison warden as part of a separate probe into an alleged scam involving a convict buying items from the prison canteen and reselling them to other inmates at inflated prices.

During the search, investigators seized some 300,000 pages of documents marked “confidential” and “secret,” believed to have been removed illegally between November and December 2022.