A man working as a delivery driver for a well-known dairy company was prosecuted for allegedly stealing milk cartons based on complaints from a bakery manager that were not substantiated.
He went through years of court proceedings with 18 appearances in the case before the Attorney General decided to suspend the prosecution due to a lack of evidence.
According to information known to Phileleftheros, the following was attributed to the formerly accused:
The theft of an unspecified number of milk cartons, which makes it questionable whether there was any motive to commit such an offence since no clear evidence emerges of obtaining a specific benefit.
One of the complainants, a manager at a bakery, submitted CCTV footage to support his theft claims, apparently without it being examined thoroughly.
When it was examined by a public prosecutor who was recently called to handle the case, more than five years after the complaint, it was found that the videos were not sufficient to support theft claims.
For this reason, it was decided to suspend the prosecution around the end of October and to finally discontinue it last Friday, 7 November.
Whilst police examinations of the video footage did not clarify whether the delivery driver was committing a criminal offence, a case was nevertheless formed against him.
As appears from the charge sheet, there was no clear evidence for the commission of the theft offence. The charges state: “The accused … stole milk, property of unknown value belonging to the bakery”.
The accused’s lawyer argues that from the videos it is possible to count, at least in one case, the quantity of milk cartons and, by extension, to show that he was not committing theft.
The delivery driver’s supervisor testified from the outset to police, speaking of his subordinate’s honesty and integrity, and cited an internal audit that did not reveal any offence but only the need to improve practice in cases where near-expiry products are exchanged.
The incident
The case arose in spring 2020. The delivery driver was at a bakery in Nicosia where, whilst replacing a number of near-expiry products, he allegedly made a mistake. Instead of returning six milk cartons, he returned four. The error was corrected when it was pointed out.
Following this incident, he was reported to police by the shop manager and the director of the owner company. The complainants handed over video footage from four dates showing the delivery driver making product exchanges to support their positions.
During police investigations, statements were taken from those involved, and a case was registered against the delivery driver in 2021.
Legal challenge
The accused’s lawyer, Marios Spyrou, wrote to the Attorney General on 14 September 2022, with the content copied to the police chief, requesting suspension of his client’s prosecution.
He explained that after studying the video footage, it emerges that the footage clearly shows that the complainants are lying.
He noted that his client’s prosecution was based only on the written testimony of the complainants.
He also spoke of deficient investigation, stating that if the case investigator had watched the CCTV footage carefully, he would have spotted the contradiction with what the complainants said, and consequently, the criminal case against his client would not have been pursued.
Response
The Law Office responded on 13 October 2025, expressing an apology for the delay in responding to the request. It attributed the delayed examination of the request to errors and the failure to assess the video footage in a timely manner to technical issues.
Finally, it informed that the public prosecutor who examined the videos thoroughly recommended that the prosecution be discontinued, which happened following a decision by the Attorney General.
