Crime in Cyprus is more about corruption than violence. It qualifies as the national sport. Anyone from Spain might get a feeling of Déjà vu all over again. They know too much about Spanish Practices but see:-
Deputy Attorney General Took Bribes From Bent Lawyers - Allegedly
Cyrus Port Chief Might Be Charged With Bribery & Money Laundering
Match Fixing Rife In Cyprus Says Ref
Central Bank Boss Concealed Bad Debts To Get €9 Billion Loan
Cyprus Corruption Is Big - It Always Was
Tombs Of The Kings Roadworks Held Up By Problems
Church Forced To Sell Assets To Pay Euro Crisis Debts
Passport Racket Makes Big Profit
Cyprus Telecommunication Company Is Bent
Paphos Mayor In Court Regarding Threats [ 16 October 2014 ]
PAPHOS Mayor Savvas Vergas will appear in court on Thursday to hear charges of conspiracy to commit a crime, related to SMS messages sent from the mobile phone of a municipal worker to several people involved in a major property fraud case. This follows on from forgery of planning permission documents.
Paphos Mayor Arrest Extended [ 20 October 2014 ]
A charity has been defrauded. Then there is the forgery.
Paphos Mayor Arrested For The Third Time [ 26 November 2014 ]
He is on the skids.
Paphos Mayor Arrested For Fraud [ 27 November 2014 ]
QUOTE
Paphos Mayor Savvas Vergas, the general manager of the Paphos Sewerage Board Eftychios Malikides and former Disy municipal councillor George Michaelides will appear in court on Thursday after being arrested connection with a sewage board fraud investigation.
UNQUOTE
Other mayors will be making sure there is no evidence pointing at them.
Paphos Mayor Resigns [ 2 December 2014 ]
He is still(?) in prison. The outstanding issues are:-
Forgery
Bribery
Theft
Abuse of planning law.
Paphos Mayor Had €6 Million In His Bank Account [ 5 December 2014 ]
Where did that come from? The proceeds of crime or not as the case may be. He is still inside and his wife is in the frame.
Paphos Bribe Suspects Released - State Is Appealing
The mayor fingered various locals. They were nicked. Now they are out. Heigh ho.
Five Thieves Convicted Of Pension Fund Fraud [ 23 December 2014 ]
They used fraud, bribery & corruption to buy land for a pension fund at a grossly excessive price. One took a bung of €300,000.
Six Going To Trial Facing 154 Charges [ 29 December 2014 ]
QUOTE
SIX people, including former Paphos Mayor Savvas Vergas will go to trial on January 8 facing a total 154 charges, including conspiracy to commit a felony, conspiracy to defraud, bribing a state official, extortion, abusing authority, corruption and acquiring property by illegal means in the Sewerage Board scandal.
Vergas, Paphos Sewerage Board (SAPA) chief Eftychios Malekkides, and former municipal councillors from DISY, AKEL and DIKO – Giorgos Michaelides, Vasos Vasileiou and Efstathios Efstathiou respectively, were each released on €200,000 bail. They were also required to hand over their travel documents and must sign in every day at their local police station.The court also referred for trial current AKEL municipal councillor Giorgos Siailis, who was implicated in the case by Malekkides. Siailis – who is facing lesser charges, was bailed for €50,000. All of the suspects allegedly took part in a corruption ring centered around the sewerage construction project. According to police reports, contractors interested in the project were routinely asked for kickbacks so they could secure contracts, while the SAPA officials kept adding to the cost of the project so that the contractors could get more work. The project, which was originally budgeted at around €80 million, ended up costing around a €120 million.............
The SAPA scandal is not the only weight on Savvas Vergas’ shoulders. The former mayor will soon have to appear before court on a number of other cases. He is also suspected of a shady land deal with land development company Aristo Developers where he allegedly gave permission so the company could illegally take green space and use it for building, sending threats via text message to a municipal councillor, a reporter and a municipality employee, building a tennis court adjacent to his home on public property without permission and green-lighting a tax exemption for a concert organiser who had promised to give all proceedings to charity but failed to do so.
UNQUOTE
€40 million is a useful sum, one worth stealing.
Limassol Mayor Claims He Is Not Bent [ 31 December 2014 ]
Presumably he thinks no evidence will come to light. Where does this leave the mayors of Nicosia, Larnaca et cetera?
PS The mayor of Jerusalem got six years for exactly the same kind of fraud but then he is a Jew.
Paphos Was One Long Corruption Party [ 4 February 2015 ]
With maybe €4 million in bribes you might think that is right. But the mayor is in prison. The next one says he will keep his fingers out of the till. The theory is that civilization ends at Dover; it's downhill all the way from there. Of with Cameron importing Pakistanis, corruption has come to England. See the next one.
Nicosia Next In Sewerage Scandals
The Nicosia sewerage project ended up costing 50 per cent more ... to six years each on charges of corruption and misappropriation of funds. A EUR 5 million cost overrun is enough to make people rich(er).
Former judge appointed to look into bribery claims [
Fury over leak of MP loan list
MPs in Cyprus don't bother to pay back the money they borrowed. It is good for their cash flow. It also amounts to robbery. MPs make law. MPs should live by law.
PS The Cyprus Mail was tactful. It did not publish the list on line, only on paper. The biggest chancer is Christakis Giovannis at EUR 28,291,770
How many MPs have Non-Performing Loans? [
Deputy Attorney General Took Bribes From Bent Lawyers - Allegedly
Aforesaid Deputy is not amused. The Deputy AG in Israel was different. He thought that the law applied to politicians as well, which is why the President got seven years for raping his secretary.Police acknowledge legal challenges in attorney-general case
By Angelos Anastasiou
POLICE WILL investigate corruption claims made by the deputy attorney-general, which also include Attorney-general Costas Clerides, the police chief said on Monday, as he highlighted the legal deficiency concerning such cases. Zacharias Chrysostomou was briefed over the weekend about the contents of deputy.
Deputy Attorney General Of Cyprus Charged With Fraud [ 20 May 2015 ]
He is in for conspiracy, accepting bribes, and corruption.
Deputy Attorney General Of Cyprus Accuses His Boss
His story was investigated then dismissed. Was it just a counter-attack?
Deputy Attorney General Of Cyprus Sacked [ 27 September 2015 ]
The charge was conduct unbecoming. Then there are the criminal charges of bribery etc. He looks like a miserable little third rater.
Deputy Attorney General Goes On Trial For Conspiracy And Bribery
QUOTE
THE prosecution in the criminal case against former deputy Attorney General Rikkos Erotokritou and three others, in which they face charges of conspiracy and bribery, called its first two witnesses to the stand on Friday, former police chief Michalis Papageorgiou and process server Panayiotis Klitou.
UNQUOTE
This is in Cyprus where Crime runs to corruption.
Cyrus Port Chief Might Be Charged With Bribery & Money Laundering [ 16 January 2015 ]
QUOTE
FORMER Cyprus Ports Authority head Yiannakis Kokkinos, who last October had been alleged to have repeatedly handed shoeboxes full of cash to CPA messengers with instructions to deposit them in his personal bank account, could face bribery and money laundering charges, sources close to the investigation told the Cyprus Mail on Thursday.
UNQUOTE
Another Cypriot, another chancer.
Tombs Of The Kings Roadworks Held Up By Problems
This is more about incompetence than corruption although the sewage saga has plenty of that. Not know where the sewers were was bad record keeping.
Match Fixing Rife In Cyprus Says Ref [
Referee Threatened After Telling Police About Match Fixing In Cyprus [ 23 December 2014 ]
The perpetrator has not been captured yet.
Two Referees Arrested
QUOTE
THE chairman of the Cyprus Referees’ Association (CRA) Michalis Argirou and former CRA member Michalis Spyrou were arrested on Wednesday night on suspicion of match fixing, a police source told the Cyprus Mail.The two men were arrested early in the evening, following a meeting at the Legal Services with Attorney-general Costas Clerides and police investigators. They were both expected to spend the night in custody and give statements to investigators..........
These are the first arrests following international referee Marios Panayi’s allegations of extensive match-fixing in the island’s top league, especially when it came to relegation matches.
They were preceded by the arrest of a football club official on Christmas Day, who was suspected of threatening former Aris Limassol football club president Kyriakos Hadjikyriakou. The alleged victim had been called in by investigators to give a statement and corroborated Panayi’s allegations. Upon leaving the police station, Hadjikyriakou told authorities that the other club official called and threatened him not to get involved.
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Who is the one who can bend the results? Try the referee or the goal keeper.
Central Bank Boss Concealed Bad Debts To Get €9 Billion Loan [ 18 Oct 2014 ]
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FORMER Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) governor Panicos Demetriades has found himself in hot water again as the New York Times reported yesterday that he had played down concerns raised over the granting of some €9bn in emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) to now-defunct Laiki Bank in a series of 2012 sessions of the European Central Bank’s governing council.ECB rules stated that ELA funding, available to solvent but illiquid commercial banks only against collateral, was the responsibility of national central banks, with the governing council holding effective veto power.
According to governing council minutes cited by the paper, late in 2012, and as Laiki’s ELA lifeline mounted, German central banker Jens Weidmann started raising objections about the extent of the ECB’s exposure to the woefully undercapitalized bank.
“It was not the governing council’s job to keep afloat banks that were awaiting recapitalisation and were not currently solvent,” Weidmann was quoted as saying in a December 2012 meeting.
And in January 2013, two months before the dramatic Eurogroup decisions that wound Laiki down and converted roughly half of uninsured deposits into Bank of Cyprus equity, Weidmann claimed that the value of the collateral posted by Laiki for ELA had been inflated by about €1.3bn.
This, the New York Times said, was a powerful charge against then-CBC governor Panicos Demetriades, as it implied he had played down the bank’s problems in order to keep it alive.
In June 2013, Demetriades admitted that Laiki had been kept “on a ventilator” until Cyprus’ February 2013 presidential elections.
According to the governing council minutes, Demetriades rejected Weidmann’s claim and said that his risk experts had a better understanding of the assets in question than their counterparts in Frankfurt.
Christian Noyer, the head of the French central bank, said that he was “very much concerned” by the aggressive way that the Cyprus central bank was valuing the collateral, adding that it “doubled the risk” for the ECB.
Klaas Knot of the Dutch central bank also chimed in, saying the collateral issue made him feel “very uncomfortable.”
“If ELA was provided without adequate collateral, this would be a grave issue,” Weidmann concluded, according to the minutes, as he pushed for the loans to be withdrawn.
But despite having received a draft report from the asset-management company Pimco that said the bank needed about €10bn in fresh cash — or about ten times its capital at the time – the governing council decided “not to object” to the continuance of the lifeline.
In a statement, the ECB once again pointed squarely at Demetriades, arguing that national banks, and not itself, are responsible for authorising ELA disbursements, and that in the case of Laiki, the governing council had relied on Demetriades’ assurances as to the bank’s solvency.
“The ECB neither provides nor approves emergency liquidity assistance,” the statement said.
“It is the national central bank, in this case the Central Bank of Cyprus, that provides ELA to an institution that it judges to be solvent at its own risk and under its own terms and conditions.”
“In this specific case, there was full consensus in the governing council on the need to get assurances from the Central Bank of Cyprus that this bank was solvent. The solvency was confirmed explicitly by the Central Bank of Cyprus, which also confirmed the proper valuation of collateral after an intense dialogue between it and the ECB.”
“The ECB was not the supervisor and fully relied on the assessment of the Central Bank of Cyprus.”
UNQUOTE
The Central Bank of Cyprus chose to bung their little mates €9 billion so its their problem, isn't it? It depends whose money it was in the first place.
Bank of Cyprus Elects 6 Russians Onto The Board
Six Russians were elected to the 16-member board of directors of the Bank of Cyprus. The substantial minority demonstrates the large stake Russia had, and will continue to have, in the Cypriot banking system.Vladimir Strzhalkovskiy, a former KGB official and Putin ally, was elected by other board members as vice chairman. Strzhalkovskiy is also the former CEO of Russia’s Norilsk Nikel, the world’s largest nickel and palladium producer.
Other approved nominees are Dmitry Chichikashvili, president of Insigma Group, a Moscow-based construction company, Igor Lazhevsk, Deutsche Bank’s deputy chairman for Eastern Europe, Anzhelika Anshakova, a board of director of Binbank, Eriskhan Kurazov, General Director at CJSC, a Moscow-based finance group, and Anton Smetanin.
Vladimir Sidorov, the former deputy head of investment at Vneshekonombank, was short-listed, but not elected. Sidorov also runs MCRS Ltd, a lift service in Cyprus.
All Russian board members were nominated by law firms with close ties to Russian and Chinese investors.
The other approved board members are Christis Hassapis, who will serve as the chairman, Costas Hadjipapas, Marios Kalochoritis, Konstantinos Katsaros, Erishkan Kurazov, Adonis Papaconstantinou, Xanthos Vrachas, Marinos Yialelis, Marios Yiannas, Andreas Yiasemides, and Ioannis Zographakis. None of the nominees were from Western Europe or America.
49 names were submitted for consideration, most of which represented individual or corporate interest.
Interim CEO Christo Sorotos was not appointed to continue his leadership role in the bank’s restructuring.
Nominees were mostly major depositors, both domestic and foreign, who held, and lost, billions of dollars when their wealth was used to bail out and save the Cypriot banks in March in an unprecedented ‘bail-in’.
A general shareholder meeting was held in Nicosia on Tuesday with 53 percent of share capital present (both in person and by proxy), representing about 2.5 billion shares.
Protestors outside of the bank before the general meeting demanded greater transparency, as shares plummeted from nearly 1 euro to 1 cent during the bank’s financial restructuring. The bank absorbed the assets of Laiki Bank which was forced to shut down in March.
“We want transparency . . . We want to know on what basis the value of our shares has shrunk by 99 per cent,” Stavros Agrotis, a Nicosia stockbroker, said. Some shareholders left the meeting in protest.
President Putin decided against using government funds to bailout Cyprus, but agreed to restructure a 2.5 billion loan issued in 2011.
Cyprus instead turned to the ‘Troika’ of lenders - which agreed to fund $13 billion (€10 billion) of the island’s bailout package on the condition an internal ‘hair-cut’ was applied- a levy of 47.5 percent on all accounts with over €100,000 in deposits.
The corporate tax rate in Cyprus is 10 percent, half of Russia’s, which made it a useful tax haven for Russian money. Up to $30 billion was deposited in the island’s banks.
The strategy to keep funds in Cyprus turned into a billion dollar headache when funds were levied and converted into bank equity, which turned Russian depositors into big shareholders overnight.
Bank Of Cyprus Fraud Probe Concluded [ 4 December 2014 ]
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According to Clerides, the cases relate to “some offences already penalised by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission, for which it has imposed fines.”Last June, financial watchdog CySEC broke precedent when it imposed a total €8m in fines to former officials of the two banks in connection with these cases.
The fines were issued against 12 former BoC officials, including former CEO Andreas Eliades, his successor Yiannis Kypri and former board chairman Theodoros Aristodemou, each fined €530,000, and 11 Laiki officials, including former strongman Andreas Vgenopoulos and his right-hand man at the bank Efthymios Bouloutas, each fined €705,000.
CySEC head Demetra Kalogirou recently said the Commission has yet to collect on the fines.
A similar case against now-defunct Laiki Bank officials is being built by the authorities, but practical issues appear to be holding back investigations. However, Clerides appeared confident that the Laiki case will also be concluded soon.
UNQUOTE
Did the head man lie to get a cash injection so that his little mates could jump ship before it went down? The official verdict is arriving. The truth? Who knows?
Five Bank Of Cyprus Officials To Be Prosecuted [ 18 December 2014 ]
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THE Attorney-general’s office decided yesterday to prosecute five former Bank of Cyprus (BoC) officials, as part of a broader probe into the causes of last year’s financial meltdown.Those to be indicted are former CEO Andreas Eliades, his successor Yiannis Kypri, former board chairman Theodoros Aristodemou, former vice chairman Andreas Artemi, and former first deputy CEO Yiannis Pehlivanidis, in charge of the bank’s Greek operations............
The precise charges are as yet unknown, but it’s understood that they likely relate to providing false and misleading statements about the bank’s capital adequacy and stock market manipulation – crimes punishable by imprisonment or a fine, or both............
Among other allegations, Kypri reportedly announced on December 10, 2009, that the bank had evaluated Greek bonds as “risky” and intended to divest its holdings.
However, without informing investors, the bank subsequently purchased a large package of Greek bonds. The bonds crashed and burned in 2011 when European Union leaders agreed on a Greek debt write-down. Cypriot lenders lost an estimated €4.5bn as a result...........
In 2005, Laiki’s share capital structure underwent a change following the acquisition of a strategic share by Andreas Vgenopoulos’ Marfin and the Tosca Investment Fund, after HSBC’s decision to sell its stake in the bank’s share capital.
Problems in Cyprus snowballed into the winding-down of Laiki Bank under a mountain of debt and a large chunk of deposits exceeding €100,000 being converted to equity to prop up the Bank of Cyprus.
Authorities were forced to seize uninsured deposits at its two main banks in March 2013 to qualify for €10bn in aid from international lenders, the first time bank savers were burned in the euro zone crisis.
The wider police probe spans the years 2006 to 2013. Its scope covers the expansion into Greece, banks’ corporate governance, Cypriot banks’ purchase of junk Greek bonds, and how now-defunct Laiki Bank came to amass some €9bn in emergency liquidity, a liability since passed onto BoC.
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So justice might be done. Customers definitely were.
http://cyprus-mail.com/?p=48464
Cyprus Corruption Is Big - It Always Was
QUOTE
A FORMER general manager at Cyprus Airways (CY) used a company plane to transport his son’s car to another country at the airline’s – and taxpayer’s expense – deputies heard yesterday during a meeting of the ad hoc committee into the national carrier’s demise.The incident was just one of several cases of mismanagement that were related to MPs by CY’s former legal adviser and its accountants.
Mismanagement, ineptitude and too-close ties with political parties and the government, led to CY’s downfall, according to the company’s legal advisor Polys Polyviou, who appeared before the ad hoc parliamentary committee. The committee is examining company documents dating back more than 30 years.“Cyprus Airways was a miniature version of Cypriot society, and as such had its [society’s] positive and negative traits,” he said.
Polyviou spoke of the company’s inner workings and how it was continually exploited by managers, and politicians for political gain and profit.KPMG’s managing director Andreas Christofides was also present and gave a shocking account of what took place in the company in the 1980s.
Christofides made specific mention to the term in office of one of the company’s former managers, Evdokios Savva. KPMG was appointed as an auditing firm to look into the company’s finances following Savva’s resignation in July 1981.
Savva, deputies heard, kept a secret account in a London bank where “politically exposed persons” from the UK wired money to pay for their tickets. The money never made it to the company, according to Christofides, but was instead deposited to Savva’s account.
Once the scandal was revealed, an arrest warrant for Savva was issued but he fled the country to the United States were it is believed that he currently resides.
The KPMG managing director spoke of other incidents of corruption and gross mismanagement, including another when Savva ordered a plane to be uses to transport his son’s car. Christofides also mentioned money that disappeared from the employee welfare fund that was used to pay overtime for the manager’s secretaries. In another incident changes to a CY building at the old Larnaca airport had cost 60 per cent more than originally budgeted.
“There were truly some terrible things happening in the company,” noted Christofides.
Polyviou shed some light on the subsequent management team, when Stavros Galatariotis took over.
By that point the government at the time, given what had gone on under Savva, decided to keep a tighter rein on the airline.
Polyviou said then President Spyros Kyprianou kept a close eye on the airline and that Galatariotis routinely “knocked on Kyprianou’s door to submit his requests.”
Galatariotis however, probably to encourage oversight, upgraded political party involvement in decision making by requesting that representatives from all parties were on the board.
“The signs were there and can be seen in the very close cooperation of the state and the company. No government has ever let Cyprus Airways operate based purely on company law,” Polyviou said.
He said the company did not bring in experts to advise them on major policy decisions but instead relied on the government and the political parties.
The resulting lack of proper expertise, according to Polyviou, was the “tragic” decision to buy the 20 per cent share British Airways had in Cyprus Airways in 1983, and expanding the company fleet.
Polyviou said Galatariotis’ reasoning was that if a representative of a rival company sat on the board he would be privy to inside information. The legal advisor said such a scenario wasn’t possible, since anyone sitting at board meetings was legally bound by confidentiality.
“Driving out British Airways deprived the company of a major strategic investor,” he argued.
After buying BA out, the CY board decided to expand the company fleet by buying from Airbus, a decision Polyviou also described as tragic. He suggested to the committee that they call upon then Galatariotis advisor at the time, a man named Rigas Doganis, to shed more light into why the company decided to buy the planes.
Polyviou also suggested that they look into Eurocypria, a charter subsidiary of Cyprus Airways that went bankrupt in 2010.
Polyviou said that when the EU looked into the inner working of Eurocypria they found evidence of mismanagement, such as overcompensation for retirement schemes and bloated staff bonuses.
“You are trying to save Eurocypria when you should be concerned with the fact that in two years time you will be called upon to prevent the shutdown of Cyprus Airways,” the EU had told CY executives in 2010, according to Polyviou, when the state was requesting permission to approve a state aid package that would keep the two companies afloat.
Polyviou also talked of Hellas Jet, also set up by CY. Hellas Jet was founded in 2003 to carry out scheduled flights from Athens airport but suffered heavy losses and was forced to shut down in 2005. CY sold Hellas Jet in 2006.
The former legal advisor to the company said Hellas Jet faced numerous problems from day one. He said he had to fly to Athens on the second day of operations to prevent the company offices being auctioned off.
The EU commission wasn’t the only one who saw the end of the company coming. During a cabinet meeting in 2007, former president Tassos Papadoulos had remarked that the company was no longer viable and that the path it was on would lead to bankruptcy. The President was commenting on the 2007 restructuring plan that was submitted by the state to the EU commission. According to Polyviou, Papadopoulos had said then that the plan was CY’s last chance.
Cyprus Airways was grounded in January, after the EU Commission issued a ruling ordering the company to return some €66 million it had received in state aid in 2012.
UNQUOTE
Bent? Cyprus? Impossible? NO! Make that certain.
Church Forced To Sell Assets To Pay Euro Crisis Debts
QUOTE
The Church of Cyprus, heavily hit by the country's financial crisis two years ago, will dispose of assets to help pay off €100m owed to banks, its head said on Friday.Archbishop Chrysostomos II told state radio: "We made deals with the banks, and we are ready to give them some property, so that we can repay our debts and... start investing."
He did not say what banks were involved, nor did he explain whether the assets he referred to were collateral against loans or property that would be sold in order to pay them off.
The church, part of the worldwide Orthodox communion, is the largest landowner on the eastern Mediterranean island, and it has business interests that range from the hotel industry to beer and wine-making.
UNQUOTE
Greeks can't handle money. QED.
Cyprus Sells European Passports - Cyprus Makes €2.5 Billion [ 8 November 2015 ]
The cost of sales is trivial; the mark up is humungous. Of course a million cunning rogues don't bother to pay. They just come and get treated as victims.
Bank of Cyprus Controlled By KGB Man
The Bank of Cyprus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Cyprus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Vekselberg half Jew
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Ackermann German - approved by Wilbur Ross LBO wallah
Cyprus Telecommunication Company Squandered Millions On Bogus Projects [ 17 November 2015 ]
Civilization ends at Dover. Then it is downhill. In fact Her Majesty's Government is better hiding corruption. Bribery tends to be a futures market rather using spot payment. It makes proving crime more difficult.