By Jennie Matthew
HARIS SOPHOCLIDES looks like a teddy bear. No irreverence intended: it’s just easy to imagine him tucked into a leather chair, nursing a whisky and puffing on a cigar, in a London gentleman’s club.
Benevolent, charming, millionaire businessman and the backbone of the influential Cypriot lobby in the British parliament, ‘Harry’ as the Brits call him, is universally liked and respected.
The consummate anglophile, he speaks in a gorgeous, rich Greek accent, using words like “naughty”, “chap” and “bit of a fuss”; delivered with a smile as though everything in life were faintly funny.
He even beams when his Greek secretary insists on heating her office at 30°C, as freezing rain lashes against the window outside.
Generous boss I think, incubated in several layers of wool to stave off the chill in my own office.
“The nicest boss I’ve ever had,” purrs one of his employees. And for someone who hob-nobs with the rich and famous; jets around on a private plane and pours millions into promoting Cyprus round the clock in Britain, he’s remarkably easy to pin down for an interview.
A gentleman of the old school, he always seems free to offer coffee (drunk out of proper Wedgwood, mind) on the mornings he’s in London.
Neither is there an ounce of the pomposity that characterises so many at the top, despite his vilification by Fleet Street as one of ‘Tony’s cronies’ over a £1 million donation to New Labour; and a £10,000 ‘blind trust’ contribution to the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.
As a property developer, there’s even a bin Laden or two in his address book, though he’s never clapped eyes on the world’s most wanted man.
He was born in Nicosia in 1937, and his early memories are of the war, watching dog fights above the school playground and “lovely” canned bacon from a British Group Captain who rented a property from his parents.
Bright and precocious, he went to the English School early and from there he won a scholarship to study engineering in England.
It was the late 1950s. Britain had told Cyprus it would never be independent and agitation for Enosis was reaching fever pitch.
In London, Sophoclides lectured on the rights of self-determination at student unions.
“I thought this was my duty towards my country. I wasn’t on a crusade against Britain. I wasn’t involved with EOKA at all.”
Home for the summer of 1957, he was interrogated and placed on a curfew.
“A Turkish policeman used to come and check on me; a very nice man. In the end we came to an agreement. He used to say ‘Sophoclidi’ and my father would answer ‘yes’, while I was out with my friends.”
The Colonial Office refused to let him return to Nicosia and banished him to Liverpool for a couple of years.
“I was told that I could continue my studies, but that it must be 200 miles away from London. I don’t hold any grudges, it was just so silly. And of course within three months I had a students’ union going on over there. They kept visiting me and saying this is not what you’re supposed to be here for.”
In 1960 he returned to Cyprus, married with a child on the way, to work for the government. But the Zurich Agreement shut the door in his face. The Greek Cypriot 7:3 quota for engineers was full up.
Released from his obligations, he joined the property developers J&P, and at 25 he was the only qualified engineer in charge of building 220 homes for British families and officers, barrack blocs and messes in Akrotiri.
Since then, it has been a meteoric rise to the top. For two years he headed up the company in Libya. At 30 he set up the London office and became instrumental in opening up the gold mine of business in Saudi Arabia and Oman.
Today, under his chairmanship, the group is worth $1billion and is one of the most successful Cypriot enterprises, with interests across Eastern Europe, Greece, Pakistan, North Africa and the Middle East.
Just as well for someone who used to spend two weeks a month in the desert.
“It’s fascinating. In Libya we chased gazelle and ate it in the morning for breakfast.” Second World War debris was littered everywhere, tanks and aircraft preserved as new in the arid heat.
In Oman, he was spoiled by his hosts. The Minister of Defence would make his helicopter available for his private exploration of the marvels.
He recruited many British experts to help cope with the workload, and the fact that he was Cypriot, not ‘imperialist’, was a huge factor in J&P’s success in the Middle East.
“Makarios was a very significant person in the non-aligned movement. In the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, we used to go around [saying] ‘Makarios’, ‘Makarios’, and we were let through anywhere. Cyprus is insignificant. You’re no threat to anybody and people identified with you.”
For the man who built Basra University, the war in Iraq was a blunder from start to finish, despite the construction projects he’s likely to mop up after the Americans and British cherry-pick the rest.
“Democracy can’t be imposed by one country on another. I am not anti-American. I respect Tony Blair. I believe he must have had a reason, but it’s not yet apparent.
“There’s a misconception about war. There is no orgy of construction. It will be an orderly above-average expenditure development. In Kuwait, we were throwing numbers around like $100 billion worth of damage. If the insurance companies paid anything like that, either they were crazy or somebody made a hell of a lot of money.”
But Sophoclides has made a hell of a lot of money. He’s got a £1 million villa in Limassol, a home in Buckinghamshire and a swanky flat in London’s Belgravia.
He’s got his hobbies, but none of them is particularly outlandish: photography, antiquarian maps, travelling – the Far East and the States.
And then there’s the Cypriot lobby in Westminster.
As president of the Greek Cypriot Federation (UK and worldwide) and the dubious-sounding but benign Greek Cypriot Brotherhood, he’s mastered the fine art of how to win friends and influence people.
MPs flock to Cyprus in their dozens for ‘fact-finding visits’; he hosts lavish Cyprus Independence Day dinners; party donations and socialising with political friends; all to promote Cyprus, the need for a settlement and how best British politicians might help.
The infamous ‘two Jags’ John Prescott holidays at his villa in Limassol and the former speaker of the House of Commons, Betty Boothroyd, are regulars on the sun loungers on the south coast.
“The Federation and the Greek Cypriot Brotherhood believe that overseas Cypriots should assist the elected government of Cyprus in any way they can.”
Given the latest collapse in the peace talks, I ask him whether it’s disappointing to have failed.
He’s amazed I can even think that. “How can you say that?” It wasn’t the British government’s fault that Denktash refused to budge, he insists, nor does he blame President Tassos Papadopoulos – a personal friend.
“I think there will be a solution. Am I optimistic about the way it would work? I’ve got reservations, but what we need is time for adjustment. It’s been good fun. I’d do it all over again,” he beams again.
And I turn up my collar and shoulder the freezing April rain.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
