Letters sent to former president Nicos Anastasiades in April and May 2022 show that he was informed on allegations concerning deputy police chief Michalis Katsounotos before the case was formally reported, according to documents before the Nicosia criminal court.

The letters are among 392 documents whose disclosure has been disputed in the trial over alleged central prisons documents.

They contain information regarding Katsounotos’ communications with a convicted prisoner and allegations that he sought compromising material against former prisons director Anna Aristotelous and her deputy Athena Demetriou.

The material is significant as Anastasiades publicly denied at the time that he had been informed about the allegations.

Following reports in June 2022 that he knew of the case, he described them as “fake news” and said he was tired of dealing with “the fake news of some inventive journalists”.

He also said that once he had been informed about the matter, he had instructed the justice minister and police chief to act.

The letters now before the court are dated April and May 2022, while the complaint against Katsounotos was made in June.

The allegations arose after Aristotelous reported that Katsounotos, then head of the drug squad (Ykan), had been communicating with a convicted prisoner and seeking damaging material concerning her and Demetriou.

Katsounotos was suspended while an independent criminal investigation was carried out.

The investigation by lawyer Achilleas Emilianides examined whether Katsounotos and the prisoner had committed criminal offences.

The report was submitted to Attorney-General George Savvides in September 2022, after which in that December, the legal service said there was no evidence that Katsounotos had acted corruptly or sought personal gain.

It said the investigation instead indicated that he may have abused his authority and committed conspiracy, but decided against criminal prosecution on ‘public interest’ grounds, with the material referred for possible disciplinary action.

The legal service said Katsounotos had been seeking information on possible criminal activity inside the prison and had prepared reports for police leadership.

It said he had received information about videos showing personal moments involving prison officials and videos concerning drugs, which could potentially have been used to exert pressure on the prison director.

However, messages cited during the investigation also formed the basis of the allegations against him.

One message attributed to Katsounotos referred to obtaining videos that would “hurt” Aristotelous, while another allegedly asked the prisoner to send material before she left the prison.

The prosecution has relied on public interest and confidentiality to oppose the defence receiving copies of the disputed documents.

The court has instead ruled that the defence should have access to the material, including documents that may already have appeared online or were inadvertently provided without their contents being redacted.

The court has also been told that the documents contain excerpts from messages, allegations concerning attempted bribes and claims about efforts to obtain evidence against the prisons’ directorate.

Katsounotos was not prosecuted over the 2022 allegations, and his disciplinary case, has remained pending since the legal service verdict.

Allegations concerning Katsounotos have also included his handling of an earlier case during his time as head of Limassol traffic police. In 2012, 17-year-old Andreas Loizou died at the Mouttayiaka underpass in Limassol.

Despite eyewitness accounts and repeated allegations of a cover-up involving a high-ranking politician’s daughter, no charges were brought, whilst authorities attributed missing records from the case to ‘technical difficulties’.