“I am sure that my wife did not leave of her own will,” Vassilis Karavassilis said on Tuesday afternoon, speaking about the disappearance of Chinese national Yu Ting, who has been missing from Artemida, eastern Attica, since 20 May.

“She left for some appointments at around 4 p.m. on 20 May, regarding apartments in Athens. I do not know what happened at midday in central Athens; I cannot direct the authorities towards any particular explanation,” Karavassilis told SKAI TV.

He said his wife had her passport with her. “She usually carried a photocopy of it, but when she went to public services she had the passport itself,” he said.

Karavassilis also rejected suggestions that she may have been carrying a large amount of cash. “There was no chance she would have had much money on her. At most, she may have had up to €1,000, which she would immediately deposit in a bank,” he said.

He added that, to his knowledge, there had been no dispute or confrontation before her disappearance. “There was no harassment, argument or anything similar that I knew of. Whatever professional or other problems she had, we always discussed them. There were no secrets between us.”

Asked why he last communicated with his wife, a Chinese-language interpreter, on 20 May but the disappearance was not reported until 10 June — after he sent his brother to their home — Karavassilis said: “My assessment was that she was outside Athens for some work. It was not something she usually did, but she had done it once or twice before.”

On those occasions, he said, Yu Ting had travelled to Czechoslovakia and France for work.

Regarding the appointment she had on 20 May, Karavassilis explained that “the building manager had contacted her because he could not reach the Chinese owner, who was in China, and they needed to open the apartment to see what was happening with the plumbing.”

Describing what happened between 20 May and the day the missing-person report was filed, Karavassilis said: “The last time we communicated was on the morning of 20 May, Greek time, when she sent me some documents. I tried to reach her by message until 25 May, and after that I tried to call her. Because of my work, I often do not have mobile signal. I returned to Greece on 15 June. On 10 June I sent my brother to the house to see what was going on. Her phone showed that it had no signal.”

According to Karavassilis, his brother reported the disappearance to police on 10 June after seeing the condition of the house.

“At the Spata police station, they were not receptive to filing a missing-person report, thinking that she may have gone on holiday or taken the money. Within 48 hours, he went to the Syntagma police station, where the disappearance was reported. On the afternoon of 15 June, I went and gave a statement to the police, and on 16 June I informed the Chinese authorities,” he said.