Annie Alexui: I would only return to Cyprus if people I trust in Russia asked me to

Social media personality Ioanna Photiou, who is better known by her alias ‘Annie Alexui’, on Friday said she would only return to Cyprus from Russia if people she trusts in Russia asked her to do so.

“The only reason for me to return back to Cyprus is if the people who I trust here in Russia would ask me to do so for whatever reason,” she told television channel Sigma.

Photiou has claimed political asylum in Russia, and said that despite this, people from the Cypriot underworld have travelled to Russia in search of her.

“It did not affect me at all. Whatever information of that nature comes my way, I take it to the authorities here. The authorities here are always like, ‘do not worry’, at the point when I asked them ‘when should I worry with you?, When they knock on my door?’. They have a lot of confidence in their forces,” she said.

As such, she said, “I have not felt any fear at all here, and I dare anyone, and this is what we say with the Russians, that even if you knock on my door, you cannot do anything”.

She also said she has withdrawn her offer to the Cypriot police to call her on her personal telephone, after publishing her telephone number on social media last month after the police announced that they had put a warrant out for her arrest.

The police, she said, did not contact her after she published her telephone number.

“I had communicated with them before [the warrant] was published … That is over, I say it clearly, whatever communication there was. It is over between me and the police. The only way they can get back into contact with me is to book themselves a ticket and come to Russia in the presence of my people and the authorities here, which I trust,” she said.

She later said that living in Russia has been “therapeutic”, and that “the way the Russians have treated me has also been therapeutic”.

During the same show, she was asked to comment on the fact that the police had declared her a wanted person to facilitate investigations into “offences under the personal data processing act, publication of fake news and harassment”, as well as the fact that Disy MP Charalambos Pazaros filed and then withdrew a complaint against her.

Asked whether she believes that other complaints will be withdrawn in due course, she said, “I do not know and I do not care either”.

“I have great confidence in my truth, I do not have any confidence in any Cypriot court, I do not have confidence in the authorities in Cyprus, I do not have confidence in the institutions in Cyprus, I have, however, great confidence that I am very well protected here. I have great confidence in my truth,” she said.

To this end, she added that if the accusations made against her were taken “to a court I trust”, she would “return victorious”.

Later asked whether the accusations of publishing false information bore any resemblance to the truth, she said that most of the information she has shared is “the product of my own research”, and that “most of the time, later on … ten more pieces of evidence and witnesses which verify what I had already said come out”.

“For everyone about whom I say things, I have ten pieces of information, and once I put it out there, more things come and I have 1,010,” she said.

She said that when she receives information regarding a public figure, “I evaluate first, I am clear with everyone who communicates with me” and that she only publishes information “which I can verify”.

“When I put something out there, I am 99.9 per cent sure it is undeniable,” she said, before referring to the case of suspended Paphos mayor Phedonas Phedonos, who was placed on leave earlier this week after being accused of domestic abuse and rape.

“When I went out there and called the mayor a rapist, I knew what I had and I know how many girls there are and I know them by name and I know the dates and I know all the local incidents,” she said.

She had earlier claimed to hold documents related to admissions of Phedonos’ wife Louiza Andreou to the Nicosia general hospital in 2017, which stated that she had been “beaten” by Phedonos.

Andreou has vehemently denied all accusations made against her husband, writing in a post on social media that “my family is being subjected to a coordinated attack”.