HCI board could face court action over 1980s collapse

BOARD members of the notorious Hellenic Chemical Industries (HCI) Ltd could face civil action over the collapse of the company more than a decade after the event, Finance Minister Christodoulos Christodoulou said yesterday.

Thousands of local investors lost money when the company folded soon after a high profile £3 million share issue in 1982. A subsequent government probe concluded a HCI prospectus produced to launch the share issue had contained deliberately misleading information about the company’s prospects.

The HCI affair hit the headlines again yesterday after a former employee and shareholder claimed the cabinet was blocking efforts by Attorney- general Alecos Markides to initiate civil action against the company’s former board members.

Petros Yiasemides alleged the government had for the past two months been sitting on a letter form Markides requesting cabinet approval for such action. The cabinet was trying to protect the “big names” among the former HCI board members, Yiasemides claimed.

Christodoulou rushed to dismiss these claims yesterday.

“There is no mystery and no effort to avoid responding (to Markides’s letter),” the minister said.

Markides had sent him a letter concerning the HCI in January last year, Christodoulou said. “The Attorney-general inclined towards the opinion that there was no issue of criminal responsibility after all these years, but he suggested we meet to discuss the possibility of civil action,” he said.

Christodoulou said he duly met with Markides and discussed the legal aspects of a possible civil action by the state against the former HCI board members.

“He undertook to study the matter further before deciding on further action, ” Christodoulou said.

President Clerides was aware of developments on the matter and the government was awaiting the Attorney-general’s opinion before taking any further steps, he said.

Yiasemides has twice begun court actions against former HCI board members in the past, in 1989 and 1990, but in both cases court action was suspended by a nolle prosequi order issued by then Attorney-general Michalakis Triantafyllides.

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