By Greenfly

I HELD an account with Barclays bank in the UK for over 50 years. That has just come to an abrupt end. The circumstances highlight yet another reason why the major banks are currently held in such odium, and may provide a timely warning for others in Cyprus.

Two days ago, I found internet access to my Barclays account had been blocked. When I spoke to the bank’s call-centre, they were mystified as to the reason, but promised to find out and return my call within 24 hours. The next day I was informed that Barclays had made the ‘commercial’ decision to discontinue the accounts of customers resident in Cyprus and several other countries. Letters to this effect ‘should have been’ sent out 90 days before the planned closure of the accounts. I explained that I had received no such notification. I asked when my account was going to be shut down. Barclays replied that my access to it via internet had already been withdrawn, my direct debits and standing orders cancelled, and my debit card invalidated. ‘Very soon’ (no-one knew when) the account itself would be closed. Although any money in it would not be lost, it would require a bureaucratic marathon to access it.

I was aghast that any bank, let alone one of which I had been a customer for over half a century, could be behaving in such a cavalier fashion.

“Can you prove,” I asked Barclays, “that you sent out the alleged notification?”

“The department responsible always does so.”

“Did they send such an important communication by recorded delivery, so that they could be certain that the customer had received it?”

“Er, no.”

“So if they heard nothing from a long-term holder of an active account, did it not occur to anyone at the bank that perhaps the customer was unaware of the impending closure?”

“Er, no; but a letter should have been sent out, etc, etc.”

“Barclays has my email address and my telephone number. Before they started the shutdown process, did no-one feel that it might be good idea to contact the client?”

“Er, no.”

As it happens, I am also resident in another European country which does not apparently carry the stigma of Cyprus. So I asked whether the bank just use my residential address in that country and keep the account open.

“No: we have started the closure process and it is now inexorable.”

“Look, let me speak to the ‘Team’ (sic) responsible.”

“No, they don’t speak to customers.”

“So what can I do?”

“Oh, you can start another account with us, but we’ll need to go through a thorough verification process to ascertain your good standing. It will take some time.”

“But you’ve known me for 50 years! I’m the same person as I was a week, a month, a year ago; except my blood pressure has now gone through the roof and I’m puce with fury.”

“Those are the regulations, sir.”

Pause. Deep breath.

“OK, so let me move my money out to another bank.”

“Certainly, sir. Only you can’t move it all at once.”

“But there isn’t much there.”

“Nevertheless, you can’t move it all at once.”

“Well, let’s move what we can then. Good. Now, when can I move the rest?”

“Tomorrow.”

“OK, but we don’t know when my account is finally being closed, do we?”

“Ah yes, just a moment. Here it is, sir: tomorrow.”

“So then I won’t be able to access the remaining funds?”

“No, sir, but you could start the bureaucratic process for us to release them. It may take a long time. Or you could wait up until midnight UK time tonight and see if you can beat the system…”

I would like to make clear that I was speaking with Barclays Call Centre staff, who are all individually polite, patient and sympathetic. However, they have the wretched job of trying to interpret the bank’s abysmal policies to the unfortunate customers. They provide the smiling, helpful face on the shield behind which the odious apparatchiks of ‘the system’ hide in anonymity amongst their bonuses.

If others in Cyprus have been affected by Barclay’s high-handed and arrogant attitude, may I suggest that they contact the UK’s Financial Services Ombudsman (http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk). This department is easy to use and sympathetic, and apparently has the power to shake the bankers’ cage. The young man to whom I spoke felt that my treatment had been extremely shabby. He would forward a report to Barclays, and the bank was obliged to respond. Apparently, if enough people make the same or similar complaints, Barclays can be fined a substantial amount, as has already happened in other cases of malfeasance.

And don’t worry, you can complain with an easy conscience: the fine won’t come out of those bonuses. The bank will just have to increase its charges.

By Hermes Solomon

RECENTLY elected Prime Minister of Greece, Alexis Tsipras’ success is testimony to three things: the strategic crisis of the eurozone, the determination of the Greek elite to cling to systemic corruption, and a new way of thinking among the young.

President of the Eurogroup, Jeroen Dijsselbloem said of Greece’s predicament: “The most important thing is that if you remain in the eurozone, you stick to the rules we have.” But he forgot to mention that the European Central Bank (ECB) broke one of its cardinal rules two weeks ago, when Chairman Draghi announced quantitative easing (QE) of one trillion plus euros.

In 2010, the IMF predicted Greece would grow as the result of its aid package. Instead, the economy has shrunk by 25 per cent. Wages are down by the same amount or more. Youth unemployment stands at 60 per cent – and that is among those who are still in the country.

The economic collapse has demonstrated complete myopia among the European policy elite. In all of drama and comedy there is no figure more laughable than a rich man who does not know what he is doing. For the past four years the troika has provided Greeks with just such a spectacle.

The creditor (lender of money) in economic theory loses out when the debtor goes belly up. And this is Tsipras’ ace in the hole…

Tsipras is 40 years of age, dynamically energetic and idealistic – the most fanciful of leaders – a breath of fresh air in a stagnant Europe that has plagued the masses with its policies of unregulated loans followed by crippling austerity. And the ‘plague’ is spreading, QE or not.

Tsipras reckons he’s going to reinstate those lost 300,000 public service jobs and a minimum wage of 751 euros. He’s going to offer free healthcare, reinstate pensions and social hand-outs for three million caught ‘desperately’ in Greece’s long-term poverty trap.

And where is the money coming from? Yes, you heard him, the rich! And if Brussels taxed the rich as it does the poor then Tsipras’ promises might become reality.

As for Greek oligarchs, their misrule long predates the crisis – not only the famous shipping magnates, whose industry pays no tax, but the bosses of energy, construction groups and football clubs. They had no intention of paying taxes when the troika ‘finally’ demanded Greece balance the books after 2010, which is why the burden fell on those trapped in the PAYE system – a workforce of 3.5 million that fell during the crisis to just 2.5 million.

Colossal companies moved their registered offices out of Greece to tax havens. Bring them all back Tsipras is saying, given that Jean Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission ‘knows’ all about tax havens.

Tsipras must first sweep clean Greece’s inefficient, wasteful and corrupt bureaucracy. Mind you, who’s buttering their bread at taxpayers’ expense more than MEPs, with a Brussels admin of over 300,000 ‘unproductive’ personnel and a wage bill that makes nonsense of Tsipras’ demands?

Just how did AlexisTsipras become leader of the far Left? He was ‘captivated’ by his partner of more than 20 years, radical Betty Batziana, who convinced him to join the Communist Youth Movement in 1990. Only when he became leader of SYRIZA did he remove a poster of Che Guevara from his office wall; the couple middle-naming one of their two children Ernesto. Not surprising that the ambassadors first invited to visit him this week was the Russian followed by the Chinese.

Ever since 1976 Greece was systematically ripping off EU funds. EU reaction was that this was an internal matter for Greece and the EU could not interfere or Brussels would be accused of being an accessory after the fact.

Solving indebtedness is a battle between Keynesians, who stimulate economies by ‘throwing money from helicopters’ at purchasers of new goods, and the Austrian School of tight asses, who want debts repaid pdq by reducing spending and imposing draconian austerity measures. The former leads to a misplaced sense of happiness followed by the latter, despair – people committing suicide or dying from cold and misery – unable to climb six flights of stairs to where the dispensary of the hospital has been intentionally located. Schools and kindergartens close, schoolchildren faint in classrooms, etc.

When Golden Dawn emerged as a frightening, violent neo-Nazi force, what struck the networked youth was how many of the political elite and big businessmen pandered to it, craving for order.

If the Germans play too tough with Greece, let’s hope they remember what happened between the wars, when the Versailles Treaty squeezed the orange until the pips squeaked; Weimar debts were inflated away and Hitler came out from under the carpet.

Media headline ‘Euro crashes to nine-year low on ‘Grexit’ fears’ was EU propagandist misinformation. The euro began its decline as soon as Draghi hinted at QE, and collapsed thereafter.

“We call for the restructuring of the debt so that it can be serviced in a socially viable way,” said Tsipras. But his plan includes erasing much of the debt.

If Greece wins that erasing of debt favour, then why not give way to other debtor nations?

Tsipras must face harsh realities. The most immediate is that Greek banks are being kept afloat by the European Central Bank. If the ECB were to end that liquidity, every ATM in Greece would run dry tomorrow and the entire banking sector collapse.

And watch out; the trusted and well tried “Cyprus Bail-in” may also visit banks in Italy, Spain and Portugal as well as Greece.

The Greek electorate, above all the young, are usurped when oligarchy, corruption and elite politics stifle meritocracy. They are signalling they’ve had enough of elites both in Greece and Brussels.

Could Tsipras emulate Greek 1940s dictator, Metaxas by saying ‘Ochi’ to Brussels authoritarianism or will he be ‘eliminated’ like his hero, Che? He never wears a necktie or crosses himself at Orthodox ceremonies – a man who refuses to conform to what he regards as hypocritical social etiquette of a corrupt bourgeoisie, though he was himself born into a bourgeois family.

If Tsipras gives way, the next violent protests in Syntagma Square could be directed at him and leave the way clear for Golden Dawn (and big business) dragging on their leashes to restore ‘the old order and racial purity’.

We face two years of electoral uncertainty in Europe, with the far left or the hard right now vying for power in Spain, France and the Netherlands.

Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP wants out of Europe and Tsipras has got Brussels worried; he might be seen as the forerunner of a Europe-wide movement against plutocracy, excessive bureaucracy and kleptocracy or ‘kicked down the stairs’ by those who pretend to want to resolve the Greek crisis yet secretly shoot arrows into his heels.

Some are describing his cabinet of ‘extremists’ as ‘the Wild Bunch’, many unpaid with or without portfolios. Could a similar leader and cabinet ever take over in Cyprus? We’ll see after the troika foreclosures bill is passed and our ‘banksters’ pursue unchecked their merciless rout of indebted homeowners and SMEs yet leave our corrupt elite untouched.

By Gwynne Dyer

Did you hear about the agnostic dyslexic insomniac? She lay awake all night wondering if there was a Dog.

But she’s a pretty rare bird. According to a large survey carried out in the United Kingdom by Professor David Voas of the University of Essex, more than half of British men who are now in their early forties (54 per cent) are agnostics or atheists, but only one-third of women of the same age (34 per cent) hold similar views.

The gender difference was even more striking when the 9,000 respondents were asked about their belief in a life after death. Only 35 per cent of the men said they believed that there was some kind of individual survival beyond the grave; 60 per cent of women said they did. That’s a difference of almost two-to-one in the level of belief, among people who otherwise have similar backgrounds. Hmm.

Now, this is obviously a topic on which a wise commentator would be very wary of offering an opinion. Much safer to keep your mouth shut and write about something else. Which may explain why this whole question about gender differences in belief in God came as a surprise to me, because when I looked into the literature it turns out that the social scientists have known about it for ages.

There is a thriving academic industry dedicated to proposing reasons for this huge belief gap. One theory holds that men are just more likely to be risk-takers (except Blaise Pascal, the 17th century French philosopher whose famous “wager” stated that we should live our live as if God exists in order to escape an eternity of torture in Hell. If He turns out not to exist, we haven’t really lost all that much. It was a breakthrough in probability theory).

Another theory is that men who score relatively high on the autism scale are also more likely to be atheists or agnostics. But that doesn’t really get us very far, since the great majority of men are not autistic, and yet a majority of British men don’t believe in God.

You will note that I am only quoting speculations on male character traits here. Some of the above-mentioned social scientists also speculate on aspects of “female” socialisation and character in their search for reasons for the great disparity in belief, but that is a minefield I do not plan to enter today. Let us instead go beyond Professor Voas’ statistics for Britain and see whether the same difference persists across cultures and continents.

Belief in God is much higher in the United States, although it is dropping rapidly. A Harris poll in 2009 found that 82 per cent of Americans had never doubted the existence of God; the same poll in 2014 found that the number had fallen to 74 per cent. This is due almost entirely to a fall in belief among younger Americans: a Pew poll of “millennials” in 2007 found that 83 per cent were believers; the same poll in 2012 found only 68 per cent.

But the gender gap in belief also exists in the US, although it is less dramatic: 77 per cent of American women say they have an absolutely certain belief in a God or universal spirit, but only 65 per cent of American men say the same. Indeed, the gap exists in every country of the developed world, although there are intriguing national differences in how wide it is.

In former West Germany, where 48 per cent of the population believe in God, the gap between men and women is 8 percentage points. In former East Germany, the cradle of the Protestant Reformation, where four decades of Communist rule eroded the hold of Christianity on the population, only 16 per cent believe in God – but the gap between men and women is less than three percentage points.

Fifty-eight per cent of Russians believe in God, but the gender gap is bigger than it is in Britain: 25 percentage points. Whereas in Turkey, a relatively developed Muslim country where almost 95 per cent of the population believe in God, there is no difference at all between the beliefs of men and of women.

What are we to make of all this? Start with the fact that decisions of this sort are rarely made on an entirely rational basis. Just as the great majority of believers everywhere never chose their original religious beliefs – they were just born into them – so any later changes in their beliefs are probably driven more by their personal circumstances than by conscious choice. Consider the difference between the two Germanies, for example.

So what are the differences between the personal circumstances of men and women that might lead to different outcomes in terms of belief? That will obviously vary from one country to another, but women still suffer from greater social and economic disadvantages than men almost everywhere.

If you have less control over the course of your own life, then belief in an all-powerful God who is just, and will ultimately put all the injustices right, is a very attractive proposition. In that case, the gender gap in belief is neither intellectual nor emotional. It’s simply pragmatic.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries

Last Wednesday it was revealed that Lutz Bachmann, one of the founders and leaders of the German movement calling itself “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamicisition of the Occident” (PEGIDA) thought it would be fun to post photographs of himself posing as Hitler on Facebook. Coming less than a week before this week’s 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, many are likely to find this revelation particularly chilling.

PEGIDA, Bachmann’s brain child, emerged in the autumn of 2014 and has been organizing weekly demonstrations in Dresden. As the number of demonstrators has grown, peaking at 25,000, PEGIDA has drawn considerable attention and become the cause of increasing domestic and international concern.

Bachmann’s behaviour obviously betrays a shocking and reprehensible lack of sensitivity and judgment. Yet, as is evident from the speed with which PEGIDA has dropped him, it also demonstrates an extraordinary lack of political acumen.

If Germany did opt for a political model comparable to National Socialism again, the similarity would lie in the substance and hardly in outward appearances. If there is one thing of which we can be absolutely certain, it is that none of its protagonists would emulate Hitler’s moustache and haircut. Even Hitler himself, if he were somehow resurrected, would doubtless appreciate that any political comeback on his part would have to begin with an extensive personal makeover. Bachmanngate is no more than a distraction. The real problems lie elsewhere.

To be sure, German society remains so over-determined by its Nazi past that most phenomena mean something different in Germany than if they were to happen elsewhere. Yet the rise of PEGIDA is, on the whole, one of the exceptions and speaks primarily to the Europe-wide rise of anti-immigrant populism.

Merkel deserves credit for her determination not to cave in to PEGIDA. She owes her third term as chancellor not only to her pragmatism, but also to a measure of integrity that has impressed even many of her natural opponents. She has consistently criticised the movement in no uncertain terms, not least in her new year’s address to the nation.

Her response to rising anti-immigrant sentiment is markedly different to that of Chancellor Helmut Kohl. In the early 1990s, Germany witnessed an appalling wave of deadly pogrom-style riots and arson attacks against foreigners. Scores of asylum seekers and immigrants, some of whom had been living in Germany for decades, lost their lives.

The Kohl government responded to the violence by meeting the racists’ demands to curtail immigration. As a result, Germany eagerly abandoned her hitherto unconditional commitment to the principle of political asylum, previously paraded as a lesson learned from the Nazi past. Kohl’s coalition turned the asylum procedure into an obstacle course. The burden of proof was shifted dramatically from the authorities to the asylum seekers.  If an asylum seeker came from a so-called “safe state” (where the government wasn’t guilty of persecution, according to Germany), they were no longer entitled to an evaluation of their individual circumstances.

In many ways, it is this closed immigration system, inherited from Kohl, that allows Merkel to respond to PEGIDA with such firmness. She knows she can censure the group without falling prey to criticism that she is lax on immigration.

While most European states have tightened up their immigration rules in recent years, rarely are they implemented as consistently and rigidly as in Germany. All the rhetoric notwithstanding, Germany ultimately still refuses to accept the reality of immigration.

Merkel’s rhetoric, in other words, is firmly opposed to PEGIDA’s racism, yet at the same time she oversees an immigration system motivated by many of the fears articulated by PEGIDA’s supporters.

Indeed, many of PEGIDA’s establishment opponents doubtless share quite a few of its problematic assumptions about foreigners in general and Muslims in particular. PEGIDA, after all, has not come from outer space. It offers an extreme and distorted representation of ideas that are prevalent in society at large and reflected not least in the German government’s immigration policy.

The rise of PEGIDA leaves the political opposition to the left of the Grand Coalition of Christian and Social Democrats in a pickle. Their room for manoeuvre is massively curtailed by the fact that Merkel is doing the “right thing,” even if she is doing so, in part at least, for the wrong reasons, and underpinned by deeply problematic immigration policies.

It is not without irony that the left tends to deny the legitimacy of any criticism of Islam and hence fails to take the threat of militant Islam seriously. Many of PEGIDA’s supporters, in turn, would presumably be quite attracted to life in the caliphate. After all, it promises clear, timeless, and non-negotiable rules for a simple and authentic existence in a homogeneous community, void of all diversity and dissent. Their racism, however, prevents them from appreciating what they would consider its merits.

As things stand, hope resides exclusively in Merkel’s ability to keep the German political class committed to firm opposition both to PEGIDA and to radical Islam. Yet revolting and reprehensible as PEGIDA is, we should not overrate its significance. Let us not forget that UKIP and the Front National recently won the European Elections in the UK and France with almost a third of the vote. By comparison, PEGIDA has a long way to go.

Lars Fischer teaches History and Jewish Studies at University College London. A former Secretary of the British Association for Jewish Studies, he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and serves on its Council. He is the author of “The Socialist Response to Antisemitism in Imperial Germany” (Cambridge University Press).

GREECE’S announcement that it did not consent to the EU statement placing responsibility for the rocket attack on the city of Mariupol that killed 30 people on Russia appears to have encouraged the Cyprus government to take a stand as well. The government spokesman Nicos Christodoulides complained that the correct procedure had not been followed (this was the objection of Greece as well) and that Cyprus had not been given a chance to give its comments on the draft, although he stopped short of saying it would not have consented.

The statement was made for domestic consumption, the government aware that it would come under attack from the political parties for its perceived failure to show solidarity with our ‘traditional friend’ Russia. With the new Greek government taking a stand, Chistodoulides could not have argued that the statement was unanimously backed and that Cyprus had no choice but to toe the EU line. The Cyprus government had to take a stand so as not to be accused of being subservient to Brussels.

This is an example of the possible dangers ahead for Cyprus. Given the traditional tendency of our politicians to emulate their counterparts in Greece there is a strong likelihood many would be urging the Cyprus government to adopt the defiant posturing and confrontational attitude of the Tsipras government towards the EU. The new Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras may have achieved none of his stated objectives – the easing of the austerity measures and the write off of part of the public sector debt – but his defiant stance towards Greece’s lenders seems to have emboldened Cypriot populists.

A few days after his election triumph, we started hearing our political parties stepping up their anti-memorandum rhetoric and calling for resistance to the troika. The Tsipras effect was evident at the legislature on Thursday when the political parties were debating a bill extending the suspension of the foreclosures law for another month, until the end of February. There were continual references to the new, Greek government’s resistance to ‘one-sided austerity’, its offer of ‘hope’ to all memorandum countries and the need to fight the troika’s diktats.

Bringing home the Tsipras effect, the opposition parties voted to extend the suspension of the foreclosures law till March 2. It was a pointless decision as we have argued several times in the past that protects nobody, undermines the trustworthiness of the state as it is prevented from honouring agreements it has made with lenders and keeps banks in a state of limbo. But the deputies are too engrossed in their populism that allows them to pretend they are protecting people from the much-hated banks to recognise the negative consequences of their actions.

While it is difficult to side with the banks after all the harm they have caused the country, the truth is that there will be no economic recovery without the banks being put on healthy footing. And for this to happen the banks must substantially reduce the NPLs on their books, which are currently above 50 per cent. The foreclosures law would enable them to start recovering their loans and put pressure on borrowers that have stopped repaying their loans because of the political rows to start making payments again.

The banks have not been giving loans because of the high percentage of NPLs they have. Unless these drop substantially, interest rates will remain at their current high levels and very few loans would be given. And when banks are not giving loans, development and job creation that the political parties have been calling for will not materialise. Protecting borrowers, penalising banks and embarrassing the government are considered sure-fire political winners by the opposition parties but they fail to realise the harm they are causing the economy. With their actions, they are preventing the banks’ eventual return to normalcy which would mark the start of economic recovery.

But it seems such matters are becoming irrelevant as the Tsipras effect takes hold of Cyprus. Nicholas Papadopoulos’ news conference on Friday was testament to this as he argued for the re-negotiation of the memorandum, spending on development projects, the return of the funds confiscated by the bail-in to depositors, the lowering of interest rates and the placing of restrictions on banks’ loan recovery policy among other things. The pursuit of unachievable goals and the offer of false hope to people will not be restricted to the Cyprus problem from now on but will extend to the economy, with dire consequences.

ALL KYPROULLA has been getting ready for tomorrow’s visit by Greece’s newly-elected, prime minister Alexis Tsipras, the left-wing populist who triumphantly swept to power last Sunday on the back of hundreds of profoundly empty promises designed to give hope to people in despair.

This crude technique worked perfectly, as the result of the elections showed, and is the reason he now has a big fan-base among our politicians. Our guys, compared to Tsipras, are third-rate, provincial populists which is why they are not as successful.

It cannot be because the Cypriot voter is smarter and less easily fooled than the Greek voter because we elected a village idiot as president not so long ago and we did not even have the excuse of having suffered the ravages of a recession for seven years.

Then again, our establishment has no right to laugh at anyone because it had been completely fooled by prez Nik, believing he would make a good president and offer the strong leadership the country desperately needed. We were colossally wrong on both counts and on many other counts as well, Nik proving just another self-serving, wheeler-dealing populist.

OUR POLITICIANS will all be sucking up to Tsipras, as he is flavour of the week, in the hope they would learn a few things from him that would help them upgrade their populist, voter-fooling techniques.

Ethnarch Junior could not wait until tomorrow, and made a Tsipras-style public appearance on Friday calling a news conference at which he lashed out against the memorandum, called for its re-negotiation and demanded that all the money stolen from B of C depositors in the bail-in was returned.

Junior also shed tears for the 70,000 unemployed and spoke of the need for foreign investment, as if this would arrive by the government pressing a button. Speaking on Sigma TV, he said that when he sees the PM on Monday he would raise the issue of the return of the billions that were transferred to Greece through the sale of the Greek branches of Cypriot banks.
I bet Junior’s new hero will promise that Greece would return every cent plus interest.

THE LIBERAL-LEFT newspapers of Europe carried glowing reports about Tsipras’ triumph but Britain’s Guardian although sympathetic was shocked by a faux pas he made during his victory speech on Sunday night.

“Friends, the new Greek government will prove all the Cassandras of the world wrong,” he said, referring to those who had predicted that a Syriza victory would be the final blow to Greece. He has repeated this sound-bite several times in the last week.

The Guardian pointed out that he could not prove the Cassandras wrong because according to Greek mythology Cassandra – the sister of Paris, who stole Helen from King Menelaus and started the Trojan War – was always right. Cassandra had been given the gift of foresight but had been punished by Apollo never to be believed, although events would always prove her pessimistic predictions correct.

Nowadays, Greeks dismiss anyone who makes gloomy predictions as a Cassandra, ignoring the myth that she was always right. I sincerely hope that proving the Cassandras wrong will be the one promise Tsipras does keep.

BLUNDER-PRONE Prez Nik had another major embarrassment to deal with on Friday, although it could be said that he was not directly involved. I refer to the investigation carried out by Auditor general Odysseas Michaelides at the request of prez after reports that Nik’s law office represented Ryanair in talks regarding the acquisition of Cyprus Airways.

Nik promised to resign if any direct involvement was found. Odysseas’ report did not find that Nik had any involvement but it pointed out that two lawyers from Nik’s law office had sat at a meeting held on October 31 and did not use their names. This was a bit strange considering that Nik’s law office, in which his two daughters are partners, had issued a statement at the end of November, when the story appeared, saying that it had informed Ryanair it could not represent it on September 30. This was because of the office’s ‘indirect links’ with the president. Yet a month later the office was still sending its lawyers to meetings.

Nik reacted as he always does – with angry theatrics. He sternly asked the Attorney general to investigate his daughters’ law office which bears his name, telling him, “I expect you to apply the full force of the law if you determine a possible violation.”

Of course it is not the Attorney general that should be dealing with this matter but Nik. His daughters should feel the full force of Nik’s non-theatrical anger – if it exists – for letting the family business down so badly and publicly embarrassing its proud founder, again.

Police during the Oroklini stand off

A SURREALISTIC hostage incident unfolded in Oroklini last Monday when a British Cypriot pub owner took himself hostage in his pub, on the Dhekelia sea-front road, and threatened to kill himself if police tried to enter to order a pint.

Police had arrived at the pub on Monday morning after 43-year-old owner Stelios Georgiou had been reported by his Moldovan ex-wife of firing a shot-gun in her direction, after a row over alimony, and lightly injuring her; pellets had hit her in the shoulder and chest. When the cops arrived to take Georgiou in for questioning he locked the pub and threatened to kill himself if they tried to enter.

Police reinforcements were called to the scene. They surrounded the pub and closed part of the road inconveniencing drivers as a cop tried to persuade Georgiou to surrender. After 30 hours of wasting the time of more than a dozen cops and pissing off hundreds of drivers the hostage and hostage-taker surrendered himself.

Phil’s report about a “30-hour thriller” seemed a slight exaggeration. It was more like a 30-hour joke incident blown out of all proportion by the media and the cops, who were praised by Georgiou’s lawyer for their professionalism.

Turning an incident that should have been dealt with in 10 minutes – the cops could have returned to the pub in the evening to arrest him – into a “30-hour thriller” involving a dozen cops standing round doing nothing requires great professionalism indeed.

THE NEW public parasites union – Independent Union of Civil Servants – that was set up as a reaction to Glafcos Hadjimourmouris and his clique’s extended authoritarian rule of PASYDY have been firing salvos at their former leadership.

Among other things, Giorgos Horatas, leader of the new union, accused Hadjiklamouris of practising blatant rusfeti. He had employed his son-in-law as financial manager of PASYDY’s old parasites’ home. The union responded that the son-in-law had all the necessary qualifications for the job and, more importantly, at the time he was hired he was not married to Hadjiklamouris’ daughter – he only was in a relationship with her.

What I would like to know is whether the job was offered in lieu of a dowry or did the wealthy union boss also provide his daughter with a house?

Interestingly, the manager of the old parasites home is the former deputy leader of PASYDY, who was hired after his retirement as a state nurse. Perhaps he did not have a son-in-law to give the job to and decided to take it himself rather than allow it go to someone who did not belong to the PASYDY family.

YOU HAD to feel some sympathy for the chairman of the Bank of Cyprus Josef Ackermann who was in Cyprus last week for a board meeting and was forced to meet the representatives of the bondholders to discuss their demands for compensation.

It must have been a rude awakening for the former chief executive of Deutsche Bank having to sit in the same room and talk to guys who a couple of months earlier had stormed the bank, clashed with security guards and made threats.

The ‘convertible enhanced capital securities’ these guys bought because the banks were offering high interest rates are now worthless and the bondholders are claiming they had been cheated and demanding their money back. Ackermann, who probably never had to face such a problem in his professional life,ruled out any compensation for ‘informed investors’.

Josef Ackermann

Needless to say that all bondholders are claiming they were uninformed investors fooled into buying the high return securities by bank employees (greed had nothing to do with it).

Ackermann was however in a difficult spot as his predecessor the Happy Bunny who wanted to be loved had told the bondholders, according to one of their representatives, that the bank would consider compensation. Even worse for the Swiss, was that Prez Nik, who also wants to be loved, had met the bondholders and promised to help them out. It is not only Tsipras that makes hollow promises.

THE POLITICIAN who has modelled himself on Tsipras most closely is Yiorkos Lillikas who issues five announcements a day telling people what he thinks they want to hear and making empty promises, not to mention his nauseating moral sermons.

On Thursday he claimed foreign minister Ioannis Kasoulides had failed to attend the EU foreign ministers’ council that would discuss the possibility of extending sanctions against Russia because he was a pawn of the US who did not want to defend Russia as Kyproulla’s interest dictated.

He accused Kasoulides of inability to place the national interest above his pro-Nato and pro-US obsessions, saying he did not act as the foreign minister of the Republic but as an unquestioning mouthpiece of Nato’s positions. The morally and patriotically superior Paphite also implied that Kasoulides had received instructions from a foreign embassy not to attend the EU meeting and defend the interest of Mother Russia.

Lillikas’ hypocrisy deserves an international award. Even if he was correct about Kasoulides – which he was not – someone openly acting as the Russian Federation’s political salesman in Kyproulla has nerve to sit in judgment of others.

Lillikas has been acting as the unquestioning mouthpiece of Moscow for months now. His demand that Kyproulla should go against the rest of the EU to block sanctions against Russia could hardly be described as serving our national interests.

LILLIKAS’ lament for our undignified foreign policy continued on Friday when the Alliance of Lillikas issued a statement again bemoaning the fact that Kasoulides had not attended the meeting of EU foreign ministers to “defend Cypriot interests and Russian-Cypriot positions”. Cypriot interests are the same as Russia’s.

But what are the Russian-Cypriot positions that Lillikas wanted Kasoulides to defend? That the invasion, occupation and annexation of another country by a powerful neighbour should go unpunished? So if someone wanted to impose sanctions on Turkey for its occupation of the north would Lillikas oppose the move as he wants to do for Mother Russia?

ETHNARCH Junior competed with his Paphite friend in the hypocrisy stakes. When he was not pretending to be Tsipras he was pretending to be a strong leader, threatening Dikheads that did not toe the party line with expulsion. His threat was directed at deputy Athena Kyriakidou who had sided with DISY in a legislature vote.

In the last presidential elections when DIKO had decided to back Nik’s candidacy, Junior disagreed and was openly campaigning for the election of Lillikas.

AKEL chief Andros Kyprianou came up with a very original suggestion for overcoming the problems caused by French oil giant Total’s decision not to carry out any drilling in its offshore concessions.

He said: “Ways must be found, always within lawful procedures, for other countries to become involved in this process, like for example Russia.” How could Lillikas not have thought of this brilliant idea first? Russia desperately needs hydrocarbons as its own might run out in 200 years.

By Angelos Anastasiades

THREE options are to be put on the table to solve a claim of €975 million against the Bank of Cyprus made by bondholders who say they were miss sold high interest securities wiped out in the bail-in.

The government has come up with the choices to settle the Capital Securities Association’s (CSA) claim against the Bank of Cyprus in connection with investments in Convertible Enhanced Capital Securities (CECS), which it will present and discuss with the association on Tuesday, a government source told the Sunday Mail.

Of the three, the source added, only one appears realistically implementable, meaning the discussion is likely to turn into a take-it-or-leave-it standoff.

Though the government has kept the nature of the options close to its chest, the Sunday Mail has learned the sole feasible proposal will include some form of arbitration by a court, a prospect deemed anathema by the association because of the protracted periods of time the overloaded justice system takes to see a case through.

Nevertheless, the association will receive a letter in the coming days from Finance minister Harris Georgiades inviting them to the table for a final decision.

Meanwhile, on Friday the association met Bank of Cyprus board member Mike Spanos, who reiterated the bank’s position of no group settlement.

According to CSA chairman Phivos Mavrovouniotis, Spanos appeared uninformed of much of the evidence backing the bondholders’ claims, and the association delegates spent much of the meeting updating him. Spanos committed to reviewing the material and evaluating the prospect of a follow-up meeting.

The issue dates back to the late ’00s, when the Bank of Cyprus and now-defunct Laiki Bank issued the first of a series of CECS, an exotic financial product that offered high yields at high risk.

Of some €2.5 billion issued by the two lenders, most of the securities were purchased by institutional investors, but over €1 billion was sunk by private individuals now claiming that the bonds were presented to them by their bankers as something of an equivalent to bank deposits, which they most decidedly are not – for example, the issuer (the bank) can opt to buy these bonds back, or not, meaning the investor may never see his or her funds returned.

Following the March 2013 events, which left Cyprus with a banking system all but nuked, the CECS issued by the Bank of Cyprus and Laiki were wiped out. Bank of Cyprus’ securities were technically turned into ‘Category C’ bank equity, which basically means they are so far down the line of priority they have zero chance of ever approaching their original value.

The very complexity of the product meant that, by law, banks could only offer it for sale through licensed investment advisors, who were obligated to explain the securities’ nature and risks to lay ‘investors’. The advisors were also supposed to have appraised every individual’s financial needs and situation and devised an “investment profile” to guide investment advice.

“That never happened,” Mavrovouniotis told the Sunday Mail. “In my case, I received a phonecall from my banker to come in for a great business opportunity. When I went in, I was told by the grinning salesman that it was the last day these bonds would be available, and that I was contacted because the bank wanted to reward its good customers. He accounted for the higher interest with the fact that ‘the bank would hold my money for five years’, implying I would get my money back after that – which was simply not true, because these bonds were open-ended, and the option of redeeming them lied squarely with the bank.

“Furthermore, I was reassured that I was virtually going to keep my deposits for as long as they held on to my money, because the bank would, on my request, grant me a loan for the equivalent of my bonds’ value at interest guaranteed to be equal or lower to that payable by the bank on the bonds. Which turned out to have been true, only now the bonds are worthless and we’re stuck with the loans.”

The bondholders’ complaints triggered a parliamentary probe that suggested irregularities in the two banks’ practices. Also, in September 2013 both banks were found by the Central Bank of Cyprus to have “violated the Investment Services and Activities and Regulated Markets law of 2007”, and a €4,000 fine was imposed on the Bank of Cyprus. Sources from the bank told the Sunday Mail that the fine related to “insignificant” instances – a claim strengthened by the equally insignificant fine imposed.

The bondholders demanded their money back, and it is with these arguments that Mavrovouniotis met with anyone who would listen, trying to convince them of the need to expedite settlement of this matter and citing threats to the very survival of many members of his association as a result of the banks’ actions.

Among those who met him was former BoC board chairman Christis Hassapis, the University of Cyprus Financial Economics professor selected to steer the bank through the impossible challenges posing it post-haircut. Mavrovouniotis has repeatedly claimed that in one of their meetings over the summer of 2014 Hassapis explicitly acknowledged the legitimacy of the association’s grievances and pledged to propose an out-of-court settlement to his board.

“I asked him ‘do you accept that we were defrauded?’” said Mavrovouniotis. “He said ‘is there any doubt? They tried to sell me these bonds, too, but I am a finance professor and didn’t take the bait. I’ll definitely take your request for an out-of-court settlement to my board’.”

A subsequent audience with President Nicos Anastasiades in September 2014 seemed like a step forward. In attendance were Hassapis, Mavrovouniotis, Georgiades, Central Bank governor Chrystalla Georghadji, and Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission chairwoman Demetra Kalogirou.

Anastasiades asked the room for proposals, and according to Mavrovouniotis, “everyone offered their two cents except for Hassapis, so the President ventured a proposal of his own as food for thought, and asked for a workable plan by October 15, which never came”.

A demo outside the Bank of Cyprus

Anastasiades’ brainstorming exercise was more storm than brain. Each bondholder was to receive a cash compensation up to €100,000 – presumably from the Bank of Cyprus, though not explicitly stated at the meeting – with any further claims to be repaid in BoC stock to the tune of 47.5 per cent, and 52.5 per cent in government bonds, post-dated to sidestep any objections from Cyprus’ international creditors.

Aside from the obvious impossibility of persuading the BoC’s shareholders to voluntarily dilute their own stakes by voting to issue hundreds of millions’ worth of new stock only months after injecting €1 billion of their own cash into the troubled lender, the President’s ‘what-if’ scenario included the use of taxpayer money to compensate individuals ostensibly defrauded by a private company, with nothing to show for the spend. The idea was killed, quietly and unceremoniously, shortly after it was floated.

Though the “is-there-any-doubt” quote attributed to Hassapis is disputed – “such a thing never happened”, said a source present at the meeting – the fact is that the out-of-court settlement issue didn’t make it onto the BoC board’s agenda until a few weeks ago. On December 19, 2014, Hassapis had already been replaced at the helm by Josef Ackermann, the Swiss former Deutsche Bank boss, and the bondholders took the issue to him, too.

This meeting proved to be a turning point, not because Ackermann was particularly helpful in breaking the deadlock – “he had no idea about the bondholders’ demands, or the nature of the issue”, said Mavrovouniotis – but because it finally brought things to a head, putting an end to the vacillating back-and-forth of previous years and precipitating a solid response by the bank.

In a letter to the association dated January 27, the BoC said it was prepared to do very little.
“It is with regret that we inform you that any proposals relating to any collective or general compensation schemes cannot be accepted or effected by the Bank as there is no adequate legal basis that will support such actions,” it argued.

And not only is there no “legal basis” for any compensation, the BoC can’t afford to compensate everyone, the letter added. All it was prepared to do was consider “alleviating the pain” of socially affected and vulnerable categories of people.

Unofficially, the bank argued that the association has members in its ranks considered “informed investors”, like partners at big accounting firms, high-level bankers, and professionals at investment firms, who were, or should have been, aware of the risks they were undertaking when they invested in CECS, and thus entitled to no compensation after their investments went bad.

These “informed investors” are thought to be hiding behind the little guys, who truly fell victim to their own ignorance, in order to secure a blanket settlement that will unduly benefit them, too.

“Several of these instances involved many millions,” a source from the BoC said. “Am I going to compensate the investor who placed €10 million and claims he was tricked into this?”

But, although he acknowledged the existence of multi-million investors, Mavrovouniotis flatly rejected the syllogism.

“The law does not specify amounts – it only distinguishes between institutional and private investors,” he argued. “Private individuals who were urged to invest without being properly informed were defrauded, no matter the amount. Period.”

Such entrenched positions leave little room for optimism. The government and the bank would like nothing more than “this thing to go away”, but have neither the cash nor the stomach to pay for it. The bondholders want their money back in full, will settle for nothing less, and promise “unprecedented” measures against the target of their indignant rage – mainly, but not solely, the Bank of Cyprus. In a classic “no-win” conundrum, the principals are left with no good options, and compromise seems out of sight, let alone reach. Save for the unlikely rabbit out of the government’s hat, the economy can only look ahead to more turbulence, starting this week.

By Maria Gregoriou

At the height of summer last year, we all re-watched one (or more) of Robin Williams’ films after the news that he was no longer a resident of this world.

If your choice was The Birdcage then you might want to see how the Greeks have put a twist on the story, as Theatro Ena in Limassol will be filled with sequins and sparkle as of Monday.

The play’s plot, just like the movie’s plot and the story behind the original 1978 film La Cage aux Folles, revolves around a gay couple, Armand Goldman and Albert.

Goldman owns a drag club and Albert (or Starina) is the club’s star attraction.

One day Goldman’s son, Val, comes home to visit and announces that he is getting married. But, alas, there is a problem. The parents of Goldman’s prospective daughter-in-law are very conservative and just wouldn’t go for gay in-laws. So, things being as they are, Val’s birth mother agrees to play wife, while Albert is stuck with playing an uncle for when the parents come over to meet them.

As in any good comedy, things don’t go as they should, roles are changed at the last minute and a conservative man ends up dressing very much as a flamboyant gay man.

The performance is directed by Andreas Christodoulides and some of the cast members are Manolis Michalidis, Sotiris Mestanos, Pantelis Antonas, Irene Constantinou and George Georgis.

The Birdcage
Performance of the story based on the original La Cage aux Folles by Jean Poiret. February 2-8. Theatre Ena, Limassol. 8.30pm. €15-12. In Greek. Tel: 96-452399

By Ian Ransom

Novak Djokovic reasserted his rule over the hard-courts of Melbourne Park on Sunday, grinding down Andy Murray 7-6(5) 6-7(4) 6-3 6-0 to win his fifth Australian Open title.

The pair waged a fierce baseline duel for the opening two sets, but Djokovic won 12 of the last 13 games to close out an emphatic win and become the first man in the professional era to secure five titles at Melbourne Park.

Top seed Djokovic sealed the victory on his second match-point, rushing to the net with a searing approach shot that Murray could only dump into the net.
The steely-eyed Serb roared in triumph and approached his player’s box to share the win with his team before tearing off his shirt and throwing it into the crowd.

The loss was Murray’s fourth in a final at Melbourne Park and third to Djokovic after the 2011 and 2013 finals.
In a slow-burning contest, the pair set the tone from the first point with a fierce rally featuring scrambling, net-rushes and a Murray lob before the Scot forced an error from the Serb.

Murray failed to capitalise on three early break points and Djokovic made him pay, leaping to a 4-1 lead.
But in the first of many momentum shifts, the Scot clawed back to 4-3 when Djokovic netted an ambitious backhand down the line.
The Serb broke Murray again to 5-3, but at a cost, injuring his thumb when he slipped on the hard court and calling for the doctors to get some treatment at the change of ends at 5-4 when handing serve back.

The Serb fumed at chair umpire Jake Garner over fans yelling out during points and grew more agitated as Murray held on to take the set into a tiebreak and compile a 4-2 lead after a string of attritional rallies.

With the set begging to be put away, Murray flinched, however, serving a double-fault and then rushing to the net, sending a volley an inch past the baseline to give Djokovic a set point.

Hammering a second serve return into the net, the Scot conceded it and a pumped-up Djokovic threw a steely-eyed glance at his player’s box.
Frustrated, Murray channelled his anger into his tennis, jumping out to a 2-0 lead but soon after was chastising himself again.
He conceded 12 straight points to be broken again and fell back to 4-2.

The match was interrupted a game later when two people jumped on the court in an embarrassing security lapse to protest against the Australian government’s off-shore detention of asylum seekers.

The players were forced to wait a few minutes as security restored order and the break gave Murray time to settle.
It was disastrous for Djokovic, however, who lost the momentum and miscued a number of shots to lose serve.
Murray raised his game, taking the match into another tiebreak and raising four set points with a series of baseline rockets.
Djokovic saved two but could do nothing on the third when Murray fired a dipping shot at his shoe-laces.

Murray then rolled into a 2-0 lead in the third set, but handed the break back and bashed the ball high into the night sky in disgust.
The Scot then crumbled in the eighth game, giving Djokovic three break points and then double-faulting to fall behind 5-3.
Djokovic coolly served out the set then went on a tear, breaking Murray twice to roar to a 3-0 lead.

In the end, it was easy for the Djokovic who coasted to his eighth grand slam title with an imperious service game and soaked up the cheers of a packed Rod Laver Arena.

By Stelios Orphanides

Cyprus should avoid siding with the new Greek government in its quest to water down its austerity programme agreed with international creditors as it would damage its reputation world-wide, an economist said.

Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras, leader of Syriza, which is the acronym of the Alliance of Radical Left, the party that won a January 25, snap poll in Greece after promising to ditch austerity and renegotiate a reduction of Greece’s debt burden, is visiting Cyprus today before travelling to Rome, Paris and Brussels to gain support for his political agenda. Tsipras said on Saturday that Greece will meet its financial obligations to its creditors. Fears, the country would ditch the euro, caused a turbulent week at the Athens Exchange and rising borrowing costs.

The Supreme Court on Monday decided to postpone its ruling on lifting the parliamentary immunity of EDEK MP Fidias Sarikas for February 9.

The former Paphos Mayor is suspected of being involved in the Paphos Sewerage Board (SAPA) scandal.

His name came up after Paphos sewerage board director Eftychios Malekkides – himself facing trial on corruption charges – fingered Sarikas as having taken bribes during construction of the first phase of the sewerage project.

According to Malekkides, Sarikas took kickbacks from a representative of a German company which had won the contract to build a sewerage treatment plant.

Giorgos Bafas, a greek academic who supposedly acted as an representative for the German company, is currently in custody regarding the case. Bafas surrendered last week, after Cyprus police issued an international arrest warrant.

Back in December, when Sarikas was first implicated in the case, the MP himself sent two letters to the Attorney-general giving his consent to the lifting of his immunity so that he could be questioned by police in a bid to clear his name.

However, last month when it came to the crunch at the first Supreme Court hearing, Sarikas did a U-turn, and objected to the move. His lawyers challenged the request filed by the Attorney-general’s office for lifting the immunity.

The top court allowed the Attorney-general time to submit additional evidence arguing for lifting the MP’s immunity as well as time to Sarikas’ lawyers to file an objection to the motion.

Chris Triantafyllides, one of Sarikas’ defence team, told reporters that the evidence presented to the court was insufficient to warrant lifting the immunity.

Moreover, Triantafyllides said, his client does not feel there was anything on which he ought to give explanations. Should something come up at a later date, then Sarikas would review his position, the lawyer said.

Six people, including Malekkides and former Paphos mayor Savvas Vergas, are currently facing trial on charges ranging from conspiracy to committing a felony, conspiracy to defraud, bribing a state official, extortion, abusing authority, corruption, to acquiring property by illegal means in the sewerage board scandal. The specific charges relate to a subsequent phase of the sewerage construction project, where kickbacks allegedly resulted in massively inflating the end-cost to taxpayers.

Under the constitution, only the President of the Republic and MPs enjoy immunity. Even if authorities have an airtight case, their hands are tied as they cannot question or prosecute unless immunity has first been lifted, following a ruling by the Supreme Court.

There have been two other cases when an MP has lost his immunity: Lefkios Rodosthenous in 1963 (extortion charges) and Georgios Georgiou in 1985 (forgery-related charges). Both were prosecuted, tried, found guilty and handed prison sentences.

By Iacovos Constantinou

AEL maintained their hopes of a top six finish with a narrow 1-0 win over AEK, while APOEL returned to winning ways after two months. Omonia moved up to third after defeating Doxa Katokopias with Anorthosis and Ayia Napa the other weekend winners.

Sardiniero’s goal eighteen minutes from time was enough to give AEL all three points against AEK at the empty Tsireion on Sunday.

It was a poor game that neither side deserved to win. As AEL’s coach Christakis Christophorou quite rightly said after the game “perhaps a draw would have been a fairer result”.

It could all have been different had AEK’s Monteiro not blasted the ball over the bar with an open goal beckoning when the score was level. AEK’s coach Christiansen rued his side’s missed chances and said that against quality teams you will be penalised when you fail to take your chances.

AEL’s weekend joy was compounded by bottom of the table Ayia Napa’s win over Ermis Aradippou by two goals to one. This allowed the Limassol team to move within two points of Ermis Aradippou with a top six finish calling.

Ayia Napa got off to a dream start and were two up with just twenty minutes on the clock with both goals coming from Curjric. Ermis pulled a goal back late in the game but it was all too little too late.

APOEL got their first win in almost two months as they defeated Nea Salamina with Rafik Djebbour notching the all important goal early in the game. New APOEL signings Lanig and Nafiu made their debuts as did Nea Salamina’s Giorgi Papava.

Omonia were comfortable winners over Doxa 4-2 despite being without their star midfielder Nuno Assis.
Omonia’s runaway top scorer Pote grabbed a brace and took his goal tally to 14, three ahead of second placed Onilo of Ermis. Ramos got the other two while Doxa hit back through Lopo.

In the weekends last game Anorthosis had to dig deep to defeat Othellos Athienou with goals at the beginning and end of the game.

Makris gave the Famagusta team a dream start in the fourth minute but had to wait until the 90th minute to make sure of the three points when Goncalves scored on his debut.

By Angelos Anastasiou

Auditor-general Odysseas Michaelides has blasted the cabinet for bypassing due tenders process in awarding a six-month contract for €50,000 to a business consultancy owned by a retired civil servant, local daily Politis reported on Monday.

In a letter dated December 30, 2014, addressed to Labour Minister Zeta Emilianidou, Michaelides referred to the case of Christoforos Georgiades, a former civil servant who retired in 2007 but was immediately appointed – the same day – to the Health Insurance Organisation (HIO), where he remained until October 2011.

In February 2012, Georgiades founded C.G. MANCONSULT LTD, a private consultancy.

The company was awarded a six-month contract for €50,000 by cabinet decision in July 2014 to help the labour ministry carry out the planning and implementation of the Guaranteed Minimum Income scheme.

But according to the Auditor-general, the cabinet did not have the power to make such a decision.

Furthermore, Michaelides questioned the rationale behind the awarding of the contract without considering other candidates.

In addition to the awarding procedures that violated government rules, Michaelides also noted that, while the labour ministry sought to employ Georgiades’ expertise, it opted to do so through his company.

This, the Auditor-general said, served no purpose other than allowing the taxation of the compensation under the company tax bracket, significantly lower than it would be if Georgiades received the income as an individual.

On a more general note, Michaelides noted that the government would do well to steer away from hiring retired civil servants, if only to avoid the perception of “recycling the same individuals”.

“Given the harsh times our country has fallen in, and with such high unemployment levels, it is not advisable to give the impression that we are recycling the same individuals”, the Auditor-general said.

He added some information relating to Georgiades’ record in the public sector, noting that following retirement in 2007, his pension was €29,145 annually until May 2011, when a law was passed suspending the pensions of all who were appointed to public office.

But although Georgiades left the HIO five months after the law was passed, thus regaining his full pension rights, he was one of the 58 officials who filed a successful case against the law, winning back their full pensions in October 2014.

Additionally, Georgiades also sued the HIO for damages of €39,459, claiming he had been placed in a lower salary bracket than his position warranted.

In response to Michaelides’ letter, labour minister Emilianidou said that the six-month contract with C.G. MANCONSULT LTD has not been renewed, and assured the Auditor-general that his “recommendations will be fully complied with in future”.

In addition, she said, the cabinet secretary has been instructed to issue a circular drawing the attention of all contract-awarding authorities to include the views of the Treasury in all proposals submitted to the cabinet.

The daughter of the boss of Korean Air Lines, on trial in what has popularly become known as the “nut rage” case, treated flight crew like “feudal slaves”, a chief steward said in court on Monday.

Heather Cho, daughter of Korean Air chairman Cho Yang-ho and the former head of in-flight service, is on trial for breaking aviation laws and conspiring with other company executives to force crew members lie about the Dec. 5 incident.

Prosecutors are seeking a three-year prison term if she is convicted.

Cho had demanded the chief steward, Park Chang-jin, be removed from a flight at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport after a first class flight attendant served her macadamia nuts in a bag, not on a dish.

The plane, already taxiing, had to return to the gate.

Park said Cho “was like a beast that found its prey gritting its teeth as she became abusive, not listening to what I had to say at all”.

“I don’t think Cho showed an ounce of conscience, treating powerless people like myself like feudal slaves, forcing us to sacrifice and treating it as if it was the natural thing to do,” Park said, fighting back tears.

Cho resigned from her posts at the airline, including vice-president, in the face of public anger and ridicule over her behaviour, which raised questions about the power of the country’s “chaebol” conglomerates.

Park appeared in court in his uniform after returning to work over the weekend after a leave of absence.

Cho’s father apologized in court on Friday to Park and promised he would not face any reprimand.

Cho’s lawyers previously told the court that she was sorry for her actions, but that they did not merit punishment. They also denied that she used violence.

Park and prosecutors had said he was forced to kneel down and Cho poked his palm several times with a folder.

Heather is the oldest of Cho Yang-ho’s three children. Her siblings are also executives with the airline.

By Chine Labbé

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former IMF chief tipped to become French president before a New York hotel maid accused him of sexual assault in 2011, went on trial in France on Monday in a separate case of alleged procuring of prostitutes.

Strauss-Kahn, 65, who settled a U.S. civil case with chambermaid Nafissatou Diallo after criminal charges were dropped, risks as much as 10 years in jail and a fine of up to 1.5 million euros ($1.7 million) if convicted in the French trial, taking place in the northern city of Lille.

Investigating magistrates who sent Strauss-Kahn to trial with 13 others argue he knew he was dealing with prostitutes when taking part in sex parties in Paris, Lille and Washington from 2008 to 2011, a judicial source told Reuters.

He is charged with “procuring with aggravating circumstances”.

Prosecutors say the charge of procuring, or pimping, is applicable because, under the French legal definition, it extends to any activity seen as facilitating prostitution.

In Strauss-Kahn’s case, judicial investigators allege he allowed his rented apartment to be used for sex parties involving prostitutes and that he was involved in organising them.

Defence lawyers for Strauss-Kahn have flatly dismissed those allegations, arguing he never made a secret of his penchant for sex parties but was unaware the women present were prostitutes and did not play any pivotal organisational role.

Strauss-Kahn, wearing a black suit, white shirt and tie, was driven into the courthouse in a dark-windowed car without stopping to address journalists posted outside. He was accompanied by his three defence lawyers.

The affair has come to be known as the Carlton Affair, named after a hotel in the northern city of Lille that is at the centre of a broader sex ring.

Strauss-Kahn, French finance minister in a boom-time Socialist government in the late 1990s, became one of the world’s most influential decision-makers in 2007 as head of the International Monetary Fund, a public lender that plays a central role worldwide in the rescue of failing economies.

That high-flying career ended in May 2011 when the world witnessed live TV images of the then IMF chief being escorted handcuffed into custody in New York after the accusations of Sofitel room-cleaner Diallo.

Strauss-Kahn, who had been preparing to run for French president and was enjoying a runaway lead in opinion polls ahead of the 2012 contest, resigned from the IMF. The fall from grace destroyed his political ambitions, leaving the way free for Francois Hollande.

Since returning to France, Strauss-Kahn has separated from his celebrity journalist wife, Anne Sinclair, met a new partner and pursued a career in private-sector investment.

The trial is expected to run for at least three weeks, a court official said.

Noble Energy has never communicated to the government any intention to cease their Cyprus operations, energy minister Giorgos Lakkotrypis said on Monday.

On the contrary, he added, the US-based company and the government are in talks on how to develop and monetise the gas finds of the Aphrodite reservoir, in offshore block 12.

He was responding to a journalist’s question as to whether the Texas outfit would be leaving the island.

“Many of these companies are concerned about [falling] oil prices and, you can understand that over the past few months some have seen their revenues halved…but in no instance has Noble raised this issue,” said Lakkotrypis.

“Companies always have concerns [about the market], and we shall handle matters as they arise,” he added.

Cypriot authorities and Noble are currently discussing how best to develop the Aphrodite play, with Noble expected to present their final development plan for the reservoir by March.

Noble are eyeing regional markets – such as Egypt – exporting the gas.

Regarding oil major Total, Lakkotrypis said that a draft of the revised contract is being vetted by the Attorney-general’s office.

The company is interested in pursuing additional geologic and geophysical surveys along the Eratosthenes seamount, to the south of the island, he said.

Recently it emerged Total had discovered no potential drilling targets in its two concessions and was mulling terminating its contract prematurely.

The government has apparently convinced the company to reconsider.

By Michele Kambas and William James

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras ruled out seeking aid from Russia and said on Monday he would pursue negotiations for a new debt agreement with European partners, but saw little sign of compromise from Germany.

Tsipras and his finance minister Yanis Varoufakis are touring European capitals this week in a diplomatic offensive to replace Greece’s bailout accord with the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund “troika”.

After a tumultuous first week during which his left-leaning government made clear it intends to keep campaign promises to ditch the tough austerity conditions imposed under its existing bailout, the emphasis this week appears to be on maintaining that a deal is still possible.

“We are in substantial negotiations with our partners in Europe and those that have lent to us. We have obligations towards them,” Tsipras said at a news conference in Cyprus during his first foreign visit as prime minister.

“Right now, there are no other thoughts on the table,” he said, when asked whether Greece would seek aid from Russia, which has suggested it could be willing to listen to a request for support from Athens.

The remarks on Russia could reassure EU partners shocked last week when the Tsipras government initially appeared to reject the bloc’s consensus on economic sanctions against Moscow. Greece eventually signed up last Thursday to extending existing sanctions against Russia for six more months.

Greece, unable to borrow on the markets and facing pressure to extend the current support agreement when it expires on Feb. 28, is looking for a bridging agreement that would give it breathing space to propose a new debt arrangement.

It has so far met a tough line from European partners, above all from Germany. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told Reuters in an interview on Monday that Berlin would not accept any unilateral changes to Greece’s debt programme.

“We want Greece to continue going down this successful path in the interests of Greece and the Greeks but we will not accept one-sided changes to the programme,” he said at the Reuters Euro Zone Summit.

Tsipras repeated calls already made by his finance minister Varoufakis for the mechanism of inspectors from the “troika” overseeing Greek finances to be dismantled and replaced by direct negotiations between Athens and its EU and IMF partners.

“I believe that this would be a mature and necessary development for Europe,” he said.

Germany responded that the troika controls were agreed as part of the bailout and should remain in place.

“The German government sees no reason to scrap this mechanism of evaluation by the troika,” Finance Ministry spokeswoman Christiane Wirtz said in Berlin.

To some degree, both sides are posturing ahead of what is certain to be difficult negotiations. The Greeks appear to be searching for more sympathetic ears first, before meeting the Germans.

Varoufakis, a pugnacious economist who has likened EU austerity policies to “waterboarding”, has been arriving for meetings with besuited European leaders in a black coat and untucked, open-collared shirt. He began in Paris over the weekend, where the centre-left government is thought to be more sympathetic than others to the case for relaxing lending conditions.

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said after meeting Varoufakis that Athens could not expect a straight debt write-off, but left the door open to other options that include giving Athens more time for repayment.

Varoufakis’s next stop was in London on Monday, where he was due to meet about 100 banks and financial institutions. A Greek government source said he planned to tell the private sector investors that they had nothing to worry about.

“We will be able to service the Greek debt on terms that will have no detrimental impact on, especially private, bond holders,” said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Varoufakis also met British officials, seeking more European allies, although Britain is not a member of the euro zone.

“It is clear that the stand-off between Greece and the euro zone is the greatest risk to the global economy,” Britain’s finance minister, George Osborne, said after their meeting.

“I urge the Greek finance minister to act responsibly but it’s also important that the euro zone has a better plan for jobs and growth,” Osborne said.

On Tuesday, Tsipras will meet Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, another young centre-left leader who is thought to be among those most sympathetic to calls for leniency.

He sees European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and French President Francois Hollande on Wednesday. So far no date has been set for a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, although they will meet at a European summit on Feb. 12.

Exactly how much time Greece has to reach a deal with its creditors remains to be seen. In theory, there are only weeks left: once its bailout expires at the end of February, the European Central Bank could be obliged to pull the plug on funding for Greek banks. In practice, however, an alternative interim funding mechanism for the banks could possibly be found.

After that, Greece has large debt payments due in March, although officials say it could have enough cash on hand to meet them, avoiding a crunch until later in the spring.

Despite German resistance to the idea of a new deal on Greece, Tsipras said the tide of debate in Europe had been unexpectedly encouraging for Athens, with more and more backing for the idea of a change of direction in Europe.

“I never expected that there would be such strong forces helping the new government create a new framework and set a new course, not only about Greece but Europe as a whole, because Europe is in a crisis,” he said.

Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was granted a request on Monday to end his community service sentence for tax fraud 45 days early for good behaviour, making him a free agent from early next month.

Last year, the 78-year-old media magnate had a four-year jail sentence commuted into an order to spend four hours a week for a year at a centre for Alzheimer’s patients, restricting his movements and political activities.

Berlusconi’s petition to have the sentence reduced was filed last month and approved on Monday by Milan judge Beatrice Crosti, over the objection of prosecutors, legal sources said.

From March 8, the four-time prime minister, still the most influential politician in Italy’s centre-right, will get his passport back and no longer have any restriction on his movement.

Berlusconi’s conviction cost him his seat in the Senate and prevented him from running for election for six years, restrictions that he is still battling to have removed.

He has appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg and is also hoping for a legislative reprieve from Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, with whom he has been working closely to draft electoral and constitutional reforms.

A political storm blew up last month when Italian media discovered a last-minute government amendment to a tax bill that would have de-criminalised balance sheet fraud for any sum below 3 percent of a company’s annual income.

The amendment would have wiped out Berlusconi’s conviction and meant he was once more eligible for office.

Renzi backed down after an outcry from much of his own centre-left Democratic Party but, rather than just scrap the amendment, he put the whole bill on ice and said he would review it at the end of this month.

Religions should unite people and not divide them, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Monday after meeting with the head of the Church of Cyprus Archbishop Chrysostomos.

“Enlightened spiritual leaders must stand up to hatred because religions are there to unite people and not divide them,” he said following a 30-minute meeting.

Tsipras, an avowed atheist, praised the work of the Church of Cyprus and thanked Chrysostomos for the help it provided vulnerable groups in Greece.

“The Cypriot Church stood by the side of the weak members of Greek society, the Greek people, who has been suffering for the past four years because of the crisis,” he said, adding that Cypriots were also experiencing the same effects.

Chrysostomos wished Tsipras all the best.

“His success will be the success of the Greek people,” the archbishop said.

Earlier on Monday, the Greek prime minister laid a wreath at the tombs of the EOKA fighters who died during the struggle against colonial ruler Britain, between 1955 and 1959.

Tsipras was given a tour of the grounds, which are known as the Imprisoned Graves and are housed in the Central Prison compound in Nicosia.

“The heroism and sacrifice of the fighters of the Cypriot struggle is an indelible source of inspiration for Hellenism,” Tsipras wrote in the visitors’ book.

“The freedom fighters’ vision of a united Cyprus, free from occupation troops, remain ever relevant. The same goes for our yearning to see the Cypriot people free and united again, looking to the future with optimism.”

By Consantinos Psillides

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wrapped up his two-day visit in Cyprus by visiting the Makedonitissa military cemetery in Nicosia and the Greek Forces in Cyprus (ELDYK) military camp in Malounda.

At Makedonitissa, a cemetery and war memorial for those who fell during the 1974 Turkish invasion, Tsipras laid a wreath and met with relatives of the missing persons.

“This is matter of human rights violation and dignity. You have our love and support,” said Tsipras, after signing a book handed to him by one of the relatives.

“These boys here, are your boys. They were lost along with our boys in 1974. We fight for them as we fight for our own. We implore you to stand by our side until the fate of each and every one of the missing is known,” one of the relatives told the Greek Prime Minister.

Greek Cypriot soldiers are buried along with Greek soldiers and officers at the military cemetery. The Greek soldiers died as a result of a failed military operation supposedly aimed at helping Cyprus during the 1974 invasion. Special forces commandos were sent from Crete to assist the National Guard but ended up being shot down by Greek Cypriot soldiers at Nicosia airport, due to lack of communication.

The Greek PM also met on Monday with representatives from the Pancyprian Organisation of the Relatives of Undeclared Prisoners and Missing Persons. The representatives requested Tsipras’ help in resolving problems concerning the organisation, chief of which is the Turkish military’s refusal to cooperate with the Committee on Missing Persons (CMP). The representatives claimed that Turkish forces refused to release reports and evidence regarding missing persons and obstruct the search by forbidding searches in areas they designate as ‘military zones’. The representatives requested that Tsipras bring the topic up when he next meets with his Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu.

Following the Makedonitissa meeting, Tsipras, flanked by Defence Minister Christoforos Fokaides and Cyprus’ ambassador to Greece Kyriakos Kenevezos, visited the ELDYK military camp at Malounda village, Nicosia.

According to the Cyprus News Agency, the PM met with the camp commander and was briefed on the state of the Greek forces on the island. Tsipras toured the ELDYK museum and addressed the soldiers, noting that ELDYK was there to defend Cyprus on the basis of international law.
“You are part of a historic guard. You serve the values of freedom, independence and justice. Both ELDYK and the state of Greece are by your side,” he said.
Tsipras left Cyprus at 12.50pm for Rome.