Charges against three defendants accused of falsely collecting cash from the state to help homeless people were dropped by the Limassol criminal court on Monday because of the absence of prosecution witnesses.

The trio had been detained in October 2019 on suspicion of collecting €200,000 from the state under false pretences.

The defendants, a 46-year-old head of an organisation supposedly helping the homeless, a 57-year-old hotel owner that hosted homeless people, and a 66-year-old employee of the hotel were arrested after a social welfare worker made several attempts to visit homeless people that were supposedly staying at the hotel but he could not find them.

On Monday morning, the criminal court dropped the charges against the three men because the prosecution could not present any witnesses to prove its case.

The defendants had been referred to the court for trial on January 23 last year. The first hearing took place on April 13 during which the three denied a series of charges including conspiracy to commit felony, obtaining property under false pretences, fraud, forgery and money laundering.

Police had said at the time that between November 2018 and October 2019 they had received several sums for providing food and board to homeless people while the people on the applications filed to the labour ministry were not staying there for the period of time for which the money was paid.