Police investigations into the Sandy affair have confirmed that the 45-year-old woman at the centre of allegations published by Makarios Drousiotis never worked at the Presidential Palace, with data from the Social Insurance Department and statements from her former employers corroborating the finding.
The allegation, central to Drousiotis’s published claims, was that Sandy worked at the Presidential Palace in 2023 through the involvement of former judge Michalis Christodoulou. According to a sworn statement submitted Good Friday before the judge who issued the search warrant for the premises of lawyer Nikos Clerides, she was never employed there during the period from 2023 to the present.
Police established, according to philenews, that during the period in question she was in fact working at a private shop in Nicosia. Her former employers were traced and confirmed this, giving formal statements to police.
Social Insurance records also show that Sandy, whose real name is Kyriaki, subsequently worked for several other employers, and that over the last ten years she worked for a number of different employers. The sworn police statement records that her Social Insurance contributions, other declarations and visits to doctors through GeSY indicate she was working in Cyprus continuously from 2001 to 2023, the period under examination.
Background
The Sandy affair erupted after Volt candidate and investigative journalist Makarios Drousiotis published a lengthy social media post alleging the existence of an organised network involving current and former officials, with Sandy, a 45-year-old woman, at the centre of the allegations.
Drousiotis alleged that Sandy had been involved with a so-called Brotherhood of senior judicial and political figures, and that she had worked at the Presidential Palace through the involvement of former judge Michalis Christodoulou. Christodoulou has acknowledged knowing Sandy but denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
Sandy’s lawyer, Nikos Clerides, told Phileleftheros that she had handed him approximately 1,000 SMS messages around 2019 which she said implicated public figures. Police raided Clerides’s home and office on Easter Saturday and seized his mobile phone, USB drive and computers. Clerides has filed a Supreme Court application to annul the search warrant.
Sandy subsequently told police the messages are not real, though investigators treated that account with scepticism, according to Phileleftheros sources. Forensic examination found applications capable of generating fake messages and calls on her two mobile phones, downloaded on March 30, before Drousiotis published his first report.
Europol is examining whether the SMS messages, submitted as screenshots, are genuine or fabricated.
All allegations in the Sandy affair remain unverified. All those named have denied wrongdoing.
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