No arrest warrant issued for Phedonos, police say

No arrest warrant has been issued for suspended Paphos mayor Phedonas Phedonos regarding allegations of domestic abuse and rape, police spokesman Vyron Vyonos said on Thursday.

He told Politis Radio that Phedonos has not been summoned to make a statement, but that the police are investigating both allegations, with a “special investigative team” having been formed at the police’s headquarters in Nicosia.

On the matter of the allegations of rape, he said a statement has been made by the alleged victim.

Meanwhile, the Paphos town hall remained under police guard throughout Wednesday night, with Phedonos having visited the building on Wednesday evening to collect his personal belongings.

It is expected that the suspension of Phedonos, as well as of Lefkoniko mayor-in-exile Pieris Gypsiotis, who also faces allegations of domestic abuse, will be formalised on Thursday when Interior Minister Constantinos Ioannou returns to Cyprus from a working visit to Brussels.

The ministry had announced its intention to suspend both Phedonos and Gypsiotis from their duties on Wednesday, with both men now set to receive a third of their salaries while suspended from their duties.

Allegations of rape against Phedonos resurfaced earlier in the week, when Paphos-based land developer Theodoros Aristodemou, of Aristo Developers, accused him of committing the crime around ten years ago, before giving a statement to the police.

The domestic abuse allegations, meanwhile, surfaced after social media personality Ioanna Photiou, better known by her alias Annie Alexui, claimed to hold documents from the related to admissions of Phedonos’ wife Louiza Andreou to the Nicosia general hospital in 2017, which stated that she had been “beaten” by Phedonos.

At the same time, newspaper Phileleftheros stated that it had seen three “electronic entries” regarding hospital visits made by Andreou.

Andreou has vehemently denied all accusations made against her husband, writing in a post on social media that “my family is being subjected to a coordinated attack”.

“Everyone who really knows me, in my workplace, in our extended family, our friends, know that I am not a victim and that I have no fear. I have lived harmoniously with my husband for 20 years. I assure you that he is a wonderful man, decent and honest, and I am truly proud of him and the battles he is fighting,” she wrote.

Aristodemou has had various run-ins with Phedonos and the Paphos municipality in recent years, having been referred for trial in 2014 alongside his wife and two associates over alleged fraudulent demarcation of 177 plots of land within municipal boundaries.

It had been alleged at the time that thousands of square metres of land which had originally been designated as green space were reassigned to a development company, but the four were cleared by the Paphos criminal court the following year.

An appeal was filed against the acquittal, but the verdict was upheld by the supreme court in 2019, which found that while the paperwork contained irregularities, there had been “no deliberate attempt to secure planning permission under false pretences” on the part of Aristodemou, his wife, or his associates.