The Supreme Court has lifted the parliamentary immunity of MP and former EDEK leader Marinos Sizopoulos, opening the way for a criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding the settlement of a €2.581 million loan connected to a company in which he was a shareholder.
The decision, taken yesterday following a request by the Law Office, authorises Cyprus Police to begin a criminal investigation covering all stages of proceedings without requiring separate court permission at each step. The case has been assigned to an experienced investigator at Police headquarters, who will gather material based on the findings of the Independent Authority Against Corruption. Once the investigative file is complete, it will be referred to the Attorney General to decide whether to register a case, a philenews source said.
Sizopoulos is being examined in connection with the 2017 settlement of a non-performing loan of €2,581,000 held by Taxan Properties Developers Ltd, in which he was one of four shareholders. Under the arrangement agreed between the shareholders and the bank, the latter would receive €1,625,000 from the sale of the company to an Iraqi investor and write off the remaining €956,000.
However, the IAAC’s report, published in September 2025, found that the real sale price of the Taxan shares was €2,025,000 — established through records submitted to the Interior Ministry as part of the Iraqi investor’s naturalisation application and confirmed by a Tax Department investigation. When the bank learned of the real figure, it filed a complaint with police, as it said knowledge of the true sale price would have affected its negotiating position.
The IAAC concluded that Sizopoulos and the other Taxan shareholders may have committed fraud, forgery, drawing up and circulation of false documents, and conspiracy to defraud.
Central to the case is a document signed by Sizopoulos on behalf of IO Ktimatiki Ltd — a company linked to the MP that held 250 shares in Taxan — confirming receipt of the full purchase price under the share sale agreement dated 4 October 2017. The IAAC said this document showed Sizopoulos had knowledge of the real sale price. Philenews first published the document in September 2025.
Speaking on state radio on 18 September 2025, Sizopoulos said there were answers to the questions raised by the document but declined to elaborate. “I will not go into details for obvious reasons because I don’t know what the legal process will be,” he said. On a further question, he added: “I cannot reveal my evidence and my advantages, how I will deal with this.”
Sizopoulos has consistently maintained that he was himself the victim of fraud by a partner in Taxan who presented him with falsified documents showing a sale price of approximately €1.6 million, and that he reported the matter to police in April 2019 when he discovered the alleged fraud. An investigative file was opened at the time but was subsequently archived by the current Law Office leadership.
Speaking to reporters after yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, Sizopoulos said: “Today’s decision by the Supreme Court essentially leads to the re-examination of a case that I had reported myself — in April 2019 — and which the investigative authorities had archived for their own reasons. I hope that at this point there will be an impartial, in-depth, objective investigation so that responsibilities are attributed where they truly belong.”
Supreme Court president Katerina Stamatou read out the court’s reasoning, stressing that the presumption of innocence remained intact. The court found that evidence objectively examined implicated Sizopoulos in the alleged offences, that the offences carried sentences exceeding two years’ imprisonment, and that they had no connection to his political or parliamentary activity. “The principles of the rule of law dictate equality before the law. Everyone is equal before the law regardless of status,” the ruling stated.
Sizopoulos’s lawyer, Chris Triantafyllides, said his client would not contest the lifting of immunity, though he does not accept the alleged offences. He reminded the court that Sizopoulos had himself reported the Taxan case to police in 2019.
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