Club owners arrested in underage crackdown

MAKING GOOD on their promise to clamp down on underage drinking, authorities stepped up inspections at clubs across the island and arrested two club owners over the Christmas weekend.

Police spokeswoman Chrystalla Demetriou said following last week’s furore over Cyprus Mail reports that Limassol bar owners served children as young 11 alcohol and allowed others into clubs, police chief Charalambos Koulentis had issued an internal memo insisting spot checks were stepped up.

She said the memo also instructed that proprietors in violation of the law be arrested.

In light of the campaign to put an end to allowing under 16s into clubs and serving alcohol to under 17s, 29 clubs in Nicosia and Limassol were inspected on the night of December 23.

Specifically 21 clubs were inspected in Nicosia where officers located a 15-year-old girl in one of them. Her parents were contacted and asked to collect their daughter from Ayios Dhometios police station, where she first made a statement. The 45-year-old club owner was subsequently arrested, police said.

Meanwhile eight clubs were inspected in Limassol where in one of them a 14-year-old boy was found, resulting in the arrest of its 48-year-old owner.

During the same campaign there were a total seven reports for offences involving the sale of alcohol and playing of music without the appropriate license, police said.
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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.