Cypriot police have discovered the missing body of former President Tassos Papadopoulos in another grave three months after it was stolen from its tomb in an apparent ransom bid, authorities said.

The body, which disappeared last December, was found late on Monday in someone else's grave in another cemetery after police received a tip-off.

"Police had realised early on that the theft of the body was for ransom," said Justice Minister Loucas Louca. "There was no political motive."

However, it was not clear whether a ransom demand was made. Mr Louca said this was the case, but Mr Papadopoulos's family denied it.

Mr Papadopoulos served as Cypriot President from 2003 until early 2008, when he lost his bid for re-election to Demetris Christofias, the current head of state. He died of lung cancer later that year.

The corpse was found in a grave in a cemetery in a community adjacent to the one to where Mr Papadopoulos had been buried, and was believed to have been placed there recently. It was identified after DNA tests.

The unprecedented crime was a riddle for Cypriot authorities who sought help from Western intelligence services and Interpol.

The perpetrators lifted a 300-kg granite slab covering Mr Papadopoulos's grave, removed the corpse and disappeared undetected.

A forceful character, Mr Papadopoulos led the Greek Cypriots to the rejection of a United Nations reunification blueprint for ethnically divided Cyprus in 2004, shortly before Cyprus joined the European Union.

The island was split by a Turkish invasion in 1974 triggered by a brief Greek Cypriot coup engineered by the military then ruling Greece.