A Cypriot woman television presenter was sentenced to life imprisonment on Thursday for ordering the murder of her boss.

A three-member Assize Court in capital Nicosia found Elena Skordeli and three other people guilty on charges of conspiring to commit murder and of killing Andis Hadjicostis, CEO of Sigma television channel on Jan. 11, 2010.

After a trial which lasted three years, the court issued a reserved judgment saying that Skordeli and her brother Tasos Krasopoulis paid two hit men to kill Hadjicostis because of differences over the television channel's shares.

The court's decision was mainly reached on the strength of testimony by an accomplice who turned prosecution witness. Fanos Hadigeorgiou, one of the three-member murder squad, stood for several days in the witness box reciting details of the planning and the carrying out of the killing.

Hadjicostis, a well-known 41-year-old media mogul managing the Dias publishing group, was shot outside his house in a plush residential area as his wife and children were waiting him for supper.

His death was initially thought to have been linked to the political problem of Cyprus as he was closely connected with the 2004 campaign to reject a UN brokered solution which came to be known as the Annan plan.

However, CCTV footage from a camera in the house of a diplomat and evidence left behind by the killers, including cigarette butts and a piece of crash helmet, soon led to the arrest of a suspect who talked about the murder conspiracy.

Prosecution witnesses testified during the trial that Skordeli, a former hair-stylist, had sold off family property to buy a large amount of Sigma TV shares so she would become an anchorwoman and television presenter.

She became angry when Hadjicostis ordered her dismissal and she tried to buy the majority of the channel's shares and push Hadjicostis and other members of his family out of Sigma's management.

The court was told that this caused an angry confrontation between Hadjicostis and Skordeli who decided to physically get him out her way.

The Court commented that though the prosecution's star witness had been an accomplice in the conspiracy, he had been a consistent and credible witness who provided an illuminating insight into the case.

The pronouncement of the guilty verdict and the mandatory life imprisonment sentence brought sighs of relief and cheers from members of the Hadjicostis family.

The mother of Skordeli and her brother fainted in the court at the hearing of the sentence and members of her family attacked journalists and policemen, but they were quickly subdued. Endi

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