Cypriot newsreader accused of hiring hitman to murder her boss

By Tabitha Morgan in Nicosia. Published: 7:00AM GMT twenty-one February 2010

Previous of Images Next Elena Skordelli: Ms Skordelli is purported to have organised the punish murdering of Andis Hadjicostis Andis Hadjicostis was gunned down outward his villa in Nicosia"s tactful entertain on the dusk of Jan 11th Photo: REUTERS

To majority viewers of Cyprus"s Sigma TV, Elena Skordelli was usually an additional flattering face in an unconstrained report of soaps, diversion shows, and cosy lounge chat.

Yet at the back of the blonde hair and girlish voice there lay a steely enterprise to get to the top: carrying proposed her career as a daytime TV lifestyle guru, she fought her approach to a desired pursuit as an dusk headlines anchorwoman.

Woman at centre of purported attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted murder tract indicted of gold-digging Failed office worker used hitman to secure ex-wifes £475k bequest Mexican drug wars emanate direct for hitman and poison baths Mother who hired hitman online to kill her partner locked up Horatio Clare: following swallows from South Africa to south Wales

And nonetheless a justice in the Cypriot capital, Nicosia, is set to be told that the 42-year-old presenter"s aspiration went well over the norm.

In a box that has repelled the island - and transfixed Sigma"s viewers as occasionally prior to - the former newscaster stands indicted of profitable an murderer to attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted murder her TV channel"s owners after he sacked her.

Ms Skordelli is purported to have organised the punish murdering of Andis Hadjicostis, 43, a renouned and well-respected report noble who was gunned down outward his villa in Nicosia"s tactful entertain on the dusk of Jan 11th.

The head of Dias Group, the largest media association in Cyprus, his differently irregular execution was primarily thought to have been related to the widely separated island"s long-unresolved domestic dispute. Shell casings believed to have from Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus were found at the stage of the crime, call conjecture that it was continuous to his firm"s antithesis to UN-backed plans to reunite the island.

Now, however, detectives have charged both Ms Skordelli, her hermit Tassos Krasopoulos, and an purported hitman with the killing, after a fourth accomplice, Theophanis Hadjigeorgiou, was arrested and resolved to give state"s evidence.

They hold that Ms Skordelli was encouraged by both punish for her sacking and a enterprise to turn a media noble herself by siezing lift out of Dias. Having already acquired a twenty per cent interest mutually with her brother, she attempted to buy out alternative Dias shareholders after Mr Hadjicostis"s death.

"Ms Skordelli was encouraged by her feeling opposite the plant given he consummated her practice at Sigma television," state prosecutor, Savvas Matsa, told The Sunday Telegraph last week.

"It was a punish killing, encouraged by her exclusion and companion with her enterprise to buy some-more shares in the company.

"If found guilty of attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted murder there can be usually one judgment hold up imprisonment."

Perhaps fittingly, for a lady who done a vital by the lens, it was camera justification that brought about her arrest.

CCTV footage trustworthy to the residence of a British shrewd person vital a little approach from the murdering showed the gunman evading on a motorcycle ridden by Mr Hadjigeorgiou, the man who is right away the prosecution"s star witness. After his arrest, he declared his co-conspirators in a seven-page military matter in sell for being put on a declare insurance program.

The box has invited comparisons with the tract of the 1995 Nicole Kidman movie "To die for", in that an desirous TV weathergirl hatches a attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted murder tract in a bid to turn a important headlines anchor.

In leaked copies of the military statement, Mr Hadjigeorgiou describes assembly Ms Skordelli at her brother"s residence after she had been fired.

There, in a room with "impressive chandeliers and cinema on the walls" he and his accomplice, Andreas Gregoriou, 33, were engaged to lift out the murdering for £43,000. They were additionally told that they they would be charity jobs for hold up at Sigma air wave once Ms Skordelli and her hermit had taken lift out of the company. According to the testimony, Ms Skordelli allegedly resolved the understanding by observant of her boss, "I wish this man dead".

Mr Hadjicostis was prepared in Britain and had won regard for expanding the Dias Group media commercial operation founded by his father, that includes 4 air wave stations, a every day newspaper, and the Cypriot franchises of OK and Time Out magazines. He was described by one of his former employees as "firm but fair, a abounding kid, but unequivocally straight, he regularly had time for you."

Ms Skordelli, by contrast, appears to have been cut out to be conjunction a Cypriot Judy Finnegan nor a part of of the Mafia underclass.

The presenter, who began her TV career in programmes about yoga and dieting, was described by one headlines cameraman who worked with her as "a bit of an air-head". Several of her colleagues at Sigma were astounded when she began presenting the dusk news. "She was so patently out of her depth," pronounced one journalist, "you usually felt contemptible for her."

Another added: "Frankly I didn"t think she was unequivocally able of organising a shooting. But she was unequivocally ambitious, you could discuss it from her physique language."

In his sworn statement to police, Mr Hadjigeorgiou pronounced that the attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted murder had been programmed by Mr Gregoriou, a grocer who granted beef to a grill run by the Skordelli family in the encampment of Pera outward Nicosia. He claimed that in the event, Mr Gregoriou had been incompetent to fire the media senior manager himself given he had been severely harmed when a explosve he was transporting in his car exploded prematurely. It is not transparent either the explosve was dictated for the murdering or for a little alternative crime. A third hitman, who has given fled to Moldova, is purported to have taken his place.

The 3 defendants were charged mutually at a rough conference convened in an makeshift courtroom in a in isolation sanatorium in Nicosia, where Mr Gregoriou is still reception diagnosis for his explosve injuries.

Ms Skordelli incited up wearing costly sunglasses and holding a Louis Vuitton bag, and was accompanied to the conference by her sister. As the charges of murder, swindling to attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted murder and the travel of firearms and explosives were review out, her sister done cut-throat gestures at the dual purported stipulate killers, and was additionally placed underneath arrest.

Ms Skordelli has strenously denied all the charges, and claims her own hold up has right away been put in risk given of what she describes as "defamatory whisperings and broadside carried out at my expense".

Nonetheless, conjecture about the attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted attempted murder with most pale decoration has dominated coffee emporium gibberish in new weeks, with the Cypriot blogosphere charity countless opposite theories.

Observers of the box have additionally remarkable that whilst Ms Skordelli has right away substituted her TV college of music for a jail remand cell, old day to day have died tough when it comes to looming prior to the camera.

As she left the sanatorium courtroom to face a watchful press pack, she stopped the womanlike military officer to whom she was handcuffed to file her hair.