The allegations brought up by former central prisons director Anna Aristotelous against assistant police chief Michalis Katsounotos were not only unfounded but also undermined public trust in the judiciary, his lawyer Modestos Poyiadjis said on Tuesday.

Stressing that this would be his last comment on the matter, he referred to statements made by Aristotelous’ lawyer Christos Triantafyllides on Monday, which he said were “full of inaccuracies and arbitrary conclusions.”

Poyiadjis accused Triantafyllides and his defendant of running a smear campaign, and dramatisation, saying their aim was to shift the discussion from the essence of the accusation.

“The very serious accusations expressed over the police, the attorney general and other institutional bodies do not harm Mr. Katsounotos but the institutional order itself,” he said.

The lawyer stressed that he and his client would not engage in the rhetoric used by the opposition, stressing the case was to be resolved before court and was not to be influenced externally.

“We will not turn a serious ongoing process into a television spectacle or a personal narrative of victimisation,” he concluded.

Aristotelous’ lawyer Christos Triantafyllides, who also represents her former senior officer Athena Demetriou, submitted a detailed statement on the official registration of the case against his client before the Nicosia district court on Monday.

He said it was the final act in a series of shameful attempts to target his client, which began when Aristotelous accused Katsounotos of asking a convict to provide him with a video of her “so he could destroy her” before she was able to shift to another position.

“My clients, Mrs Anna Aristotelous and Mrs Athena Dimitriou, have been informed that a criminal case has been registered against them (…) regarding documents allegedly found outside the premises of the central prisons via the media. None of them are involved in the case,” he said.

The case reportedly involves eight defendants including Aristotelous, as well as five serving prison officers and one former prison officer, now serving in the police, who was filed following instructions from the attorney-general’s office.

Triantafyllides emphasised that his client’s request for the attorney general to appoint an independent criminal investigator to the case had been dismissed.

This, he said, left the police responsible for investigating their own assistant police chief, Katsounotos.

Government spokesperson Konstantinos Letymbiotis on Tuesday remained reluctant to comment further on the matter.

In statements to journalists, he said that all actions in Aristotelous’ case will be taken in accordance with the legal procedure.

The investigation surrounding Aristotelous was launched in early April 2025, when police searched the home of a prison warden as part of a separate probe into an alleged scam involving a convict buying items from the prison canteen and reselling them to other inmates at inflated prices.

During the search, investigators seized some 300,000 pages of documents marked “confidential” and “secret,” believed to have been removed illegally between November and December 2022.

Aristotelous was serving as governor of the central prisons at the time of the alleged unlawful removal of the documents, before leaving the post in late December 2022.

In late June 2025, the cabinet suspended her from her post as acting permanent secretary at the defence ministry.

During court proceedings, Triantafyllides repeatedly said that his client was being used as a “scapegoat” and would appeal the decision.