The Alma movement has dropped parliamentary candidate Demetris Papadakis from its election ballot, saying it cannot simultaneously demand a full corruption investigation and defend a man at the centre of it.
The decision, taken by the Executive Secretariat on 6 April, reverses a 20 January 2026 resolution to include Papadakis as a candidate for the Nicosia district.
The secretariat said it respected the presumption of innocence but described the matter as political rather than legal. A “political shadow,” it said, had formed around Papadakis — one that, even if ultimately unjustified, had temporarily shaken the trust a movement must place in its candidates.
At the heart of the affair are messages that journalist Makarios Drousiotis claims show Papadakis in communication with Michalis Christodoulou, a former Supreme Court judge the journalist accuses of serious corruption.
The wider allegations — published on social media — prompted what the secretariat called a political earthquake: claims of links between senior judicial officials, the Law Office of the Republic, and political figures, as well as bribery, surveillance, and the use of state mechanisms for private gain.
Papadakis has categorically denied the messages are authentic, saying they were fabricated. He told the secretariat he was securing a report from an independent forensic expert to be submitted to police.
The secretariat said it could not rule out that some of the published messages might be authentic. If they were, it said, nothing in them suggested criminal conduct — but they could point to behaviour that was politically objectionable.
Papadakis, who said he learned of the decision in a late-night call with Alma President Odysseas Michaelides, called the split an inevitable “political divorce.”
He said he had not enjoyed clear support in his effort to expose what he called the truth about the allegations — posts that, he maintained, had not accused him of anything improper, only that he had allegedly exchanged messages with a former Supreme Court judge he said he does not even know.
He added that the “Drousiotis fairy tales are collapsing” and that the truth was emerging “hour by hour, even through the admissions of those who circulated or fabricated them through a barrage of false messages.”
Alma said it would finalise its Nicosia district ballot by 17 April 2026 at the latest. It repeated its call for the Independent Authority against Corruption to immediately and fully investigate the allegations, and said the actions of police and the Justice Minister had deepened public suspicion about the integrity of the inquiry.
The secretariat warned that the President — who had committed to examining the appointment of criminal investigators — had yet to act, and that key evidence and testimony could be destroyed while he waited.
The case was brought to light when journalist and Volt parliamentary candidate Makarios Drousiotis made a series of public claims touching on paedophilia, corruption and other serious misconduct. He says he has evidence to support them, including messages, audio, and photographs. The allegations have not been proven, and some people named have rejected them.
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