A CYPRIOT website yesterday followed up on a report naming a UK-based company that was promising investors astronomical returns on the purchase of land near the site of a proposed new golf course in Larnaca.
Earlier in the week Stockwatch (www.stockwatch.com.cy) had run a story saying the company, Investors Provident, also dealt in real estate development in the occupied areas.
The website’s authors said they had contacted the company’s representative in Cyprus, who confirmed Investors Provident dealt with both Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot property in the north.
In its report, Stockwatch referred readers to the company’s site on the internet, which boasted: “Invest Only CYP £11,512 and Achieve Returns of between 60 to 80 per cent in 15 months.”
According to the Stockwatch, the project, called St Andrews Court, is located just 1,400m away from the future golf course. The company’s pitch is that the value of the apartments will skyrocket once the course is complete.
This raised a few eyebrows, as the government only recently announced plans to build 12 to 14 new golf courses across the island in a bid to boost tourism, suggesting to some that Investors Provident had inside knowledge.
The company’s website had listed a number of ongoing projects in the free areas, but also in the north, particularly Kyrenia and Boghazi. But in a twist, the references to the northern projects disappeared from the website yesterday, a day after Stockwatch broke the story.
Still, a search of the website revealed, under the Press Releases section, general references to development in the north.
Stockwatch yesterday said that, for all its far-fetched claims, Investors Provident was not a phoney company but very real. Its representative in Cyprus was based in Limassol and had dealings with a number of Greek Cypriot real estate agents.
When Stockwatch’s story filtered through to the mass media, questions were inevitably asked as to whether Greek Cypriots had ties to business interests in the north.
Ever since the documented construction boom in the breakaway regime (where the majority of land originally belongs to Greeks) several similar reports have appeared of north-south connections. None have yet been substantiated.
It was the latest blow to the government’s ambitious plans to build a dozen or so new golf courses, after it emerged that developers were given far too many incentives. Earlier this year, the administration had to answer allegations that it was changing the criteria for golf courses to serve private financial interests.