NICOSIA, Jan. 5 (Xinhua) -- A Cypriot court on Friday handed a jail sentence of two-and-a-half years to former Bank of Cyprus (BoC) chief executive officer Andreas Eliades for lying to shareholders before the economic crisis of 2013.

A criminal court in Nicosia found Eliades guilty of misleading shareholders on capital needs in a general meeting in July 2012.

BoC as a legal entity was also found guilty and fined 120,000 euros (144,578 U.S. dollars).

Cypriot media said this was the first court case in which bank officials have been found guilty and jailed in what the media described as the main reason for the near-meltdown of the Cypriot economy which led to a 10 billion euros bailout in March 2013.

Eliades was cleared of charges of manipulating the market after a Supreme Court ruling on a legal technicality. Four other former senior BoC officers were also cleared of all charges on the same technicality.

The court said Eliades was unscrupulously lying when he told the shareholders that the capital shortfall of the bank was just 200 million euros, but the next day he revised it considerably higher in a letter to the governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus.

BoC's capital shortfall resulted from a heavy purchase of Greek government bonds which were devalued by about 75 percent in a deal between Greece and its lenders in 2012.

The bank completely changed its management and was restructured with a second recapitalization in October 2014, raising 1 billion euros from international investors.