The board chairman of the privately-owned Alter television channel Kostas Yiannikos was arrested by the SDOE financial crime squad on Monday for failing to pay 1.2 million euro in VAT since the start of 2011.

Yiannikos was arrested with the procedure for someone caught in the act of committing a criminal offence and will be led before a public prosecutor to be charged on Tuesday, based on the evidence against him.

If the charges brought against him are for a criminal offence, the case file will be assigned to an examining magistrate and Yiannikos will then have to appear before the magistrate.