CyTA cargo being resent via legal port

THE Chairman of the Cyprus Telecommunications Authority (CyTA) Stavros Kremmos said yesterday the issue of telecommunications equipment ordered from Romanian arriving via the north was now closed.

Instead of being unloaded in Larnaca, the CyTA cargo was taken to Famagusta, then driven to the Ayios Dhometios checkpoint where it was turned back.

Speaking at a news conference, Kremmos said that he didn’t care where the cargo was right now and that CyTA was just waiting for the cargo to be resent in a legitimate way.

“For CyTA, this matter has been closed for about a week now. The supplier has taken full responsibility for what happened because we had an agreement with him to have some equipment delivered to our warehouses. We don’t know and don’t care where that equipment is right now. The only thing that we know is that we ordered some equipment and that it arrived in an illegal way, thus prompting us to not to accept it.”

The Permanent Secretary of CyTA, Nicos Timotheou, explained how the events unfolded.

“The equipment that we had ordered was to be brought in by containers and it appears that it was loaded into lorries and driven via Bulgaria and Turkey, where a ferry boat transferred the cargo to the illegal port of Famagusta. From there, they attempted to cross over into the free areas via the checkpoint.

“The customs services very correctly didn’t allow them to pass over and the supplier in Romania immediately called for the cargo to be returned back and resent in a legal way. We don’t know how long it will now take for the cargo to get here but we do know that it will take around three days to get back to Romania.”

Kremmos said he was suspicious as to who was responsible for the controversial route the cargo had taken.

“I am very suspicious as to how the cargo left from Turkey to Famagusta, without the supplier’s knowledge and am also equally suspicious as to how they ended up at the checkpoint and under whose order.”

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.