Georgios Chrysanthou, the head of the police’s graphology department, testified on Friday in the case against former volunteer commissioner Yiannakis Yiannaki, who stands accused of having forged a high school diploma, a university degree, and a letter of recommendation.

He said that for the purpose of comparing handwriting and signature samples, sick leave forms submitted by Yiannaki during his time working for the Cyprus youth organisation (Onek), the job application he had sent to Onek, and a letter of recommendation were sent to the police’s graphology laboratory.

Those documents, he said, were examined, with it being found that the signatures on all the documents except for the letter of recommendation were the same, but that regarding the letter of recommendation, he was “unable to express an opinion because the signature was of poor quality”.

Asked about Yiannaki’s high school diploma and the word “seventeen” which appears as one of his grades, which previous witnesses had said had been handwritten, he said it was “a poor quality copy in English and there seemed to be a word written obviously by hand”.

He said that of other words and numbers written on the diploma, “it could not be determined to be handwritten” as it was “impossible to express an opinion”.

Meanwhile, former Onek board of directors chairman Kyriakos Theodotou also testified, explaining that in 2007, the board created “operating regulations and new service plans”, one of which stipulated that some employees must have university degrees.

Asked whether Yiannaki should have had a university degree, he answered in the affirmative, but said that “it was not the duty of the board to check the personal files, but it was the duty of the executive secretary, and we considered that he had”.

“During my six-year tenure at Onek, there was never any question of questioning the university degree or any other qualifications held by Yiannaki. If such a thing had come to my attention, the board would have called on Yiannaki to provide explanations, and if falsification was verified, he would have been removed,” he said.

Yiannaki was made a permanent employee of Onek on January 1, 2008, while it was said that his years of experience were the main reason for this.

Yiannaki resigned from his role as volunteer commissioner in 2021 amid a media storm over the alleged crimes.

The case had drawn intense social media scrutiny, with pictures of crudely doctored documents doing the rounds.

In 2022, then police spokesman Christos Andreou had said that the San Diego State University, the university in the United States at which Yiannaki had claimed to have studied, said it had no knowledge of or ever even heard of him.

He said that the police had received oral confirmation from the university in question that Yiannaki never graduated from the institution.

“The case is essentially concluded but we are waiting for this piece of evidence… once we receive it, we can assess which offences may have been committed,” he said.

A picture of his university degree, a bachelor’s in civil engineering issued in 1992, had circulated, with the certificate bearing the signatures of four officials, one of whom is Edmund Gerald Brown Jr, cited as California governor.

However, Brown was not California governor in 1992, having served between 1975 and 1983 and then between 2011 and 2019. In 1992, Brown was putting together a run for the United States’ presidency, but came second in the Democratic party’s primary race to then-Arkansas governor Bill Clinton.

Apparent tampering with Yiannaki’s high school diploma and his university degree, was discovered by the auditor-general of the day Odysseas Michaelides after he received an anonymous complaint about the issue.

During the case so far, Yiannaki has been through two lawyers, with Yiannis Polychronis having walked out in November last year following a warning from judge Gregoriou about contempt of court, and his successor Thanasis Korfiotis asked to withdraw from the case citing “ongoing disagreements” between himself and his client.