The Supreme Court granted land developer Savvas Kakos permission on Thursday to file an application seeking to quash his arrest warrant, dated July 27, after a judge found he had shown an arguable case that it may have been “issued in excess of power without the conditions for its issuance being met.”
Kakos was arrested in connection with 11 cases under investigation involving a large number of people who allege they were defrauded by the Greek Cypriot businessman. According to the complaints against him, sale contracts he had filed with the land registry, for which money had already been paid, were later withdrawn.
Kakos’s lawyers argued they should be given leave to file an application for a writ of certiorari, saying the conditions for issuing the arrest warrant had not been met, that issuing it had not been necessary, that the principle of proportionality had been violated, and that it had been issued on the basis of concealed material facts or fraud.
They argued that Kakos had known about the complaints against him for some time, and that if he had intended to influence witnesses or destroy or conceal evidence, he could already have done so. Circumstances showing he had known for some time about the investigation, they said, had not been disclosed under oath and had been concealed from the lower court, which would have acted differently had it known.
They added that since a search warrant had also been issued for the location believed to hold the evidence being sought, police could have seized it without Kakos being able to destroy or conceal it by moving it elsewhere.
Supreme Court judge Charis Malachtos ruled that Kakos had shown, at first sight, an arguable case that the warrant had been issued without all the relevant facts having been disclosed to the lower court. “No question of fraud arises,” he said.
Kakos was represented in the proceedings by Antonis Dimitriou, C. Alexandrou and C. Petrou of Dimitriou & Dimitriou LLP.
