Telephone surveillance in Cyprus is not a phenomenon of recent years. It is a practice with deep roots, one that did not suddenly emerge with the exposure of former Israeli intelligence operative Tal Dilian's activities in the country in 2019. Court rulings and a report by the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection document three serious earlier cases involving the interception of telephone communications, the collection of personal data and illegal recordings, each connected to corruption in different institutions.
Bugs at the Nicosia Sewerage Board
According to two court rulings from 1990 and 2001 identified by Politis, the events of the first case unfolded as follows. After receiving information about possible financial irregularities and corruption, the director of the Nicosia Sewerage Board concluded that his professional duty and the protection of the organisation's interests required him to investigate and expose the alleged misconduct. He proceeded to monitor and record, on magnetic tape, telephone conversations conducted through the office telephone of the board's executive engineer. The surveillance began on 8 May 1989 and ended on 5 June 1990.
On 9 October 1989, the director delivered a confidential report in a sealed envelope to the president of the board and Mayor of Nicosia, Lellos Demetriades, concerning works being carried out for the board by contractors. On 25 January 1990, the board's council decided to establish a special investigative committee to examine the matter of losses caused by the delayed execution and delivery of sewerage projects by specific contractors. On 9 April 1990, the director disclosed to the members of that committee the existence of magnetic tapes containing recorded telephone conversations from the executive engineer's office phone. All tapes were placed in sealed envelopes and stored in the board's safe.
Two parallel investigations
The board's legal adviser expressed the view that no criminal offence had been committed by the surveillance. The Assistant Attorney General, Loukis Loukaidis, disagreed, indicating that a criminal offence had been committed, grounded in both constitutional provisions and Article 136 of the Criminal Code. In a letter to the board's council dated 18 June 1990, he confirmed that he had instructed the chief of police to conduct a criminal investigation. A second, parallel investigation was launched by the Audit Service into the execution of the board's works. The case ultimately resulted in the criminal prosecution of the board's director for the offences of illegal surveillance and interception of telephone communications.
Damages awarded
Nine years later, the civil action filed by the executive engineer against the director, claiming damages for the interception of his telephone communications, was concluded at the Nicosia District Court. On 16 July 1999, the court awarded him damages of £5,000. The case reached the full bench of the Supreme Court, with the former director seeking to overturn the first-instance ruling ordering him to pay £5,000 to his former subordinate. The Supreme Court's decision, issued on 8 May 2001, was unanimous: the sum of £5,000 constituted fair compensation for the surveillance and interception of the complainant's telephone communications.
Cyta and the private detective
Politis identified reports from 2009 referring to a scandal involving the interception of telecommunications data. A Cyta employee was arrested who had been monitoring, intercepting and selling mobile telephony data to a private detective, a former police officer, who then used the data in connection with cases he was handling.
The matter came to Cyta's attention when a customer, holding a list of his own telephony data, went to the organisation's offices demanding an explanation. The incident raised suspicion, since the personal data in question were confidential and could only have been obtained by someone with inside access. In a statement to police, the customer admitted he had purchased the telecommunications data. Internal investigations at Cyta led to the employee, who was found to have been monitoring, intercepting and extracting information from mobile phone calls.
On 20 October 2017, the Commissioner for Personal Data Protection, Irini Loizidou Nikolaidou, issued a notice stating that, prompted by the volume of press coverage between 12 and 18 August 2017 implicating Cyta in a personal data leak scandal which, according to those reports, had begun to surface as far back as 2009 without any criminal investigation having been conducted, she had decided to investigate the incident. After completing her investigation and taking Cyta's position into account, the commissioner in November 2017 imposed a financial penalty of €10,000 on Cyta for breaching the provisions of the Personal Data Processing Law.
The referee and the fixed matches
A case of illegal recording of a private telephone conversation between a referee and a member of the Cyprus Football Association's Arbitration Committee, which took place between 2010 and 2011, also reached the courts. The referee had been recording his conversations with the committee member, during which the latter requested favourable treatment for lower-division football clubs and youth teams. The recordings were disclosed and used when the referee gave a statement to police on 24 December 2014, reporting the committee member's unlawful conduct. Criminal proceedings followed against the committee member, who pleaded guilty and received a suspended prison sentence.
Because police had not filed criminal charges against the referee, who was the prosecution's key witness, the member of the CFA Arbitration Committee on 21 December 2018 launched a private criminal prosecution against the referee on charges of interception and surveillance of private communications. Four years later, the referee was convicted by the District Court and sentenced to four months' imprisonment. He subsequently sought to overturn his conviction before the Supreme Court. The court dismissed his appeal, ruling that recording a private conversation without the consent of the other participant constitutes a criminal offence, even when the recording is made by a person who is themselves party to the conversation. The end, the court concluded, does not justify the means.