An excerpt from a German television show was heard in the background of an audio recording of ‘Sandy’, the woman at the centre of allegations made by journalist Makarios Drousiotis against a number of high-profile figures.

Drousiotis had produced the recording last week, with ‘Sandy’ talking over the German voice. News website Alpha reported on Wednesday that forensic analyst Alexis Mavros had uncovered its origin.

The documentary aired on German television channel Arte in 2019, with its subject having been economic hardship in Venezuela.

In the clip in question, its narrator explained that “Venezuelans have come to terms with the restrictions and supply shortages” and that “at first, they thought it would be temporary, but they have become a permanent part of their lives”.

The fact that the source of the audio is a documentary appears to contradict an account of the matter given by journalist Stelios Orphanides on news website Documento.

Orphanides had written that the German voice in the audio recording was “an announcement from loudspeakers, most likely at a train station, in German, related to the emergency measures in force at the time due to the pandemic”. He had earlier written that the recording itself was taken in 2021.

Earlier, former Edek MEP Demetris Papadakis had enlisted the help of Mavros, employing him to examine his mobile phones.

Most news websites in Cyprus reported the same information on Wednesday, but attributed the findings to Dino Pastos, the founder and chief executive officer of a company named Texodus, which lists its billing address as a detached house in the Nicosia suburb of Aglandjia, and where it appears he is the sole employee.

Pastos’ credentials are less well known than those of Mavros, though he did make headlines earlier this year when he suggested that a video which alleged campaign finance lawbreaking on the part of President Nikos Christodoulides and his associates may have been produced by Turkish hands, citing the use of the Turkish alphabet in some captions in the video.

It later transpired that Israeli private intelligence agency Black Cube was behind the video, with the company telling the Cyprus Mail that it was “proud” to have produced it.

Previously, he had stood as a candidate in the 2016 parliamentary elections for Yiorgos Lillikas’ Citizens’ Alliance party, though he failed to win election, and the Citizens’ Alliance was absorbed by Edek in 2021.

Drousiotis claims that ‘Sandy’, who is now 45 years old, as raped and stabbed by former supreme court judge Michalakis Christodoulou, whom he also accuses of fathering three of her children.

Christodoulou maintains his innocence, saying that he had “acted like a father” to ‘Sandy’, while other figures named by Drousiotis, including Papadakis and Edek deputy leader Morfakis Solomonides, both of whom he alleges to have “acted on the behest of Christodoulou as informants and interlocutors”, have denied the allegations.

Newspaper Phileleftheros, meanwhile, for which Drousiotis previously worked, has insisted that Drousiotis’ accusations do not correspond with reality.

The newspaper wrote last Friday that ‘Sandy’ has one child, whose father is not Christodoulou, and that Gesy and social insurance records show that she worked continuously in Cyprus between 2001 and 2023, thus ruling out the possibility of her ever having spent an extended period of time in Germany as Drousiotis has claimed.