Two disciplinary procedures had been carried out against the former CEO of the co-op bank Nicolas Hadjiyiannis prior to his appointment, including one for harassing a referee before a football game, an inquiry heard on Tuesday.
The three-member panel investigating the collapse of the co-op bank said the first case concerned the violation of capital controls imposed after the island’s messy bailout deal in 2013. It related to the payment of four cheques worth around €300,000 on behalf of a law firm while he was at Laiki Bank.
He had also approved payment of €6,000 by the same law firm
The reason for the second disciplinary procedure was because he had harassed a referee before a football game in 2011 using his office telephone. No other details were immediately available.
Hadjiyiannis, according to the panel, had been reprimanded in the second instance.
The former CEO suggested that the issue with the disciplinary probes was raised in 2015, when he was going to be appointed, in a bid to hurt the co-op bank.
Of the first procedure, he said it concluded without there being a penalty before he had left Bank of Cyprus – which absorbed certain Laiki operations — to join the co-op three months later.
Hadjiyiannis said BoC CEO John Hourican wrote to the European Central Bank explaining what had happened.
It had taken the European supervisor a few months to approve the appointment in December 2015.
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