BACK IN the days of the Cold War, if anyone said the Russians were coming, everyone apart from the Akelites would be booking tickets to get out of Kyproulla ASAP with all the worldly possessions they could take with them. Back in those days a Russian presence in your country was not something to celebrate unless you were a communist zealot.
Nowadays things are completely different. Not only are the Russians here, but we are going out of our way to persuade as many as possible to come and settle on the heat-wave isle. This is because the Russians no longer visit places in big groups, bringing with them tanks and guns. They arrive as individuals bringing with them loads of moolah that we Kyproullans worship.
If it were not for mega-wealthy Russians’ inexplicable fondness of our cultural backwater, our economy would be in an even bigger mess than it is now and most of the expensive restaurants of Limassol would have closed down. We should be grateful to them for keeping our economy going despite the recession and the Tof presidency.
We are among the world’s most kolofardi (lucky) people, because whenever things look like taking a turn for the worse, foreigners, with bags of money arrive to save us. After the invasion, we had the wealthy Lebanese fleeing their civil war. Then we stumbled on the idea of the offshore business and attracted money launderers and as well as legit companies from all over the world.
The break-up of Yugoslavia and ensuing war gave our economy another big boost as we acted as the Milosevic regime’s official money launderers. Once the Serbs left, the Brits invaded our shores, buying holiday homes. By then, wealthy Russians also started arriving, setting up businesses here – where the Moscow authorities could not touch them.
The flow has been increasing and Limassol has been colonised by the Russians, but nobody is complaining because apart from being fair-skinned and of the Orthodox faith, the new colonists have loadsamoney, buy overpriced luxury items and pay extortionate prices for houses.
GRADUALLY we are also getting to know some of the Russian oligarchs who have business links with the 50-year-old Republic. Two weeks ago, the comrade president bestowed a medal on Interros president Vladimir Potanin, number 25 on the Forbes list of the world’s billionaires, who was guest at the IV Cyprus-Russia Gala.
This week we found out about Dmitriy Rybolovlev, number 79 on the Forbes list, after it was announced that his company Odella Resources became the biggest shareholder of the B of C. Odella bought 45.3 million shares that were held by the bank’s provident fund at a total cost of some €222 million, taking its shareholding in the bank to 9.7 per cent.
With such a stake, Rybolovlev could take effective control of the board of the B of C and make himself chairman but nobody appears in slightest bit bothered about this possibility. When a few years ago Greek bankers had tried to take control of the bank, everyone was up in arms, led by the Archbishop, who wanted to keep our biggest and oldest bank under Cypriot control. It is unlikely Rybolovlev is remotely interested in taking control; the head honcho of the B of C would not have set up the deal if there was the flimsiest possibility that his control would be threatened.
ON FRIDAY another Russian billionaire was in the news, Suleiman Kerimov who is way down in the Forbes World’s Richest People List – number196. A Cyprus court had frozen $6 billion worth of Russian assets, including Kerimov’s stakes in potash producer Uralkali and mining group Polyus Gold, we were informed.
The B of C’s biggest shareholder Rybolovlev, sold his 53.2 per cent stake in Uralkali this year. Was Kerimov one of the buyers? I do not know. A more interesting bit of gossip is that Rybolovlev is currently involved in an acrimonious divorce dispute with his wife, who is reportedly demanding $2 billion in settlement, including the $100 million Palm Springs mansion he bought from Donald Trump.
If she wins Rybolovlev could slide down as many s 20 places in World’s Richest People List. But at least he will still get to keep his B of C shares.
SPEAKING of banks we hear that comrade president has asked our two leading banks to pick up the bill for next month’s state visit by the President of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev. The B of C and Marfin Popular were asked to contribute €50,000 each towards the expenses of Medvedev’s visit and both were happy to oblige. Public finances must be in a much worse state than we thought, if our commie president seeks hand-outs from the banks to cover the costs of a state visit
KERIMOV, according to Wikipedia, is known as ‘Russia’s Richest Civil Servant’. I just hope Glafcos Hadjipetrou, the miserable boss of the parasites’ union PASYDY does not hear about this because he would start complaining that Cyprus’ civil servants were badly paid. Our civil service may boast some millionaires, but billionaires are unheard of, which just goes to show that the parasites are not that well-paid.
And things can only get worse for the leeches, because our good friend Charilaos seems hell-bent on cutting their pensions, because failure to do so would lead, with mathematical certainty, to the total collapse of the economy, a few years down the road. After Charilaos described the pension system as ‘ticking time-bomb’ that had to be reformed, the miserable union boss called to demand explanations but was given short shrift – not the kind of treatment he is accustomed to.
He will probably take up the matter with the father of the proletariat, comrade Tof, and argue that the collapse of the economy would be no bad thing as it would allow the establishment of socialism.
STATE PENSION scams are big in the People’s Republic and biggest has been pulled off by those selfless servants of the people – deputies. After the outrage expressed about the practice of factoring the untaxable allowances paid to top public servants into the calculation of their state pensions, Hadjipetrou revealed that deputies’ scam.
In the case of deputies, even the €6,000 allowance they collected for secretarial services was included in the calculation of their pensions, adding several hundred euros to their monthly pension. They were being paid a higher pension for the work of others. If this is not theft from the state and authorised by the state, then I am the world’s 197th richest woman.
PLUNDERING public assets has developed into the most popular participation sport in the 50 years of life of the People’s Republic. The average number of days of sick leave taken at the Electricity Authority of Cyprus is 12 days apparently, at an annual cost of €5 million to the Authority.
EAC, which has been screwing us with the second highest electricity rates in Europe, also offers university scholarships to the kids of its workers. These were not given to the kids of the lowest-paid staff, but to those with the best academic results. In other words, the highly-paid employees who could afford to send their kids to private schools and private lessons are also picking up the scholarships.
As the House Watchdog Committee was told this week, a scholarship is often given to the kid of employees on €100,000 a year. After hearing this I did not feel so bad about paying my €500 electricity bill. My money was being put to good use, helping EAC’s rich executives get richer.
THE GRAND plan, of the Paphite health minister with the fragile ego, to set up a transplant centre at the Nicosia General Hospital has hit a major snag. While he has hired the staff, the centre does not have the lab equipment for the donor compatibility tests required before performing a kidney transplant.
Dr Patsalides and his health ministry experts only just realised they needed this equipment and had not budgeted for them.
This is the minister who boasted that the hospital transplant centre would be performing liver and heart transplants when he decided – over issues of his ego and pride – to close down the Paraskevaideon Kidney Transplant Centre which had been successfully carrying out such operations for close to 30 years. Health policy in the People’s Republic is shaped by the personal ego concern of the non-medical Dr Pats.
He decided to close down the Paraskevaideon Centre, when he learned it would be housed at the new, state-of-the-art premises of the American Heart Institute, which he is doing his best to destroy ever since one of its doctors spoke disrespectfully to him, causing lasting damage to his ego. He tried to force the centre to break its contract with the AHI and move to Nicosia General, but failed. This prompted him to take the decision to set up his own transplant centre, a decision that would lead to the closure of the Paraskevaideon, as it would no longer receive state funds.
Faced with the embarrassment of a non-functioning transplant centre – a big blow to his ego – the minister with the PhD, has swallowed his pride and gone to the Paraskevaideon begging it to give its donor compatibility testing equipment to the general hospital. He has generously offered to call the hospital lab the Paraskevaideon in exchange – a small price to pay to cover up his bungling incompetence and protect his ego.
THIS GUY was given absolute powers over where to send patients for treatment, by the Tof government which changed the regulations in 2009, taking ministry officials out of the decision making process and making it the exclusive right of the health minister.
This is licence to indulge in rusfeti and allows Dr Pats to send as few patients as possible to the AHI. He prefers to send them to Israel, which costs more to taxpayer, and we also pay a hefty commission to a company that acts as the agent of two Israeli hospitals. The Israeli hospitals considered Cypriots ‘golden patients’ because, until a couple of weeks ago, they were charged top rates plus all sorts of extras, without anybody querying the bills. This also suited the middlemen who were taking a percentage of the bill.
Once this ridiculous arrangement was publicised, two weeks ago, the health minister decided to fly to Israel and negotiate charges with the hospitals. Until then the ministry was wasting our money paying whatever the Israelis charged plus commissions, so long as Cypriot patients would not go to the AHI.
Such incompetence would not be allowed in operating a neighbourhood kiosk, but in the People’s Republic it is allowed to handle a budget of hundreds of millions of euro.
UNIONS at the Coca Cola factory are preparing for war after they were informed that the company would be terminating its production of cans. This would make a couple of hundred workers redundant, but apparently, importing the cans from abroad would cost the company much less and boost its profits. The company will also scale down its bottling operations, from two shifts to one. We hear that union bosses plan to fight the decision even though the company has offered to pay the staff it lays off double the compensation they are entitled to. Coke – You can’t beat the real thing.
EVERYONE was waxing lyrical about the bravery of the Limassolians who quite stupidly put their lives at risk to catch two bank robbers, who had taken 10 grand from a B of C branch in their town. One of the robbers was carrying a sawn-off shotgun.
Call me a coward, but I would not have risked an injury to my fingernail to stop anyone who stole money from a bank. I may even have applauded the robbers and cheered them on for doing to a bank what banks have been doing to their customers for centuries.
I am no socialist but I can’t help thinking of bank robbery as a tiny victory of the small-time thieves over the big time ones.
READERS who feel cheated by the lack of any content about the comrade president’s triumphant visit to New York and his historic address of the UN General Assembly on Friday should ask for their money back from the Russian oligarchs who took up all the space that had been allocated for the Cyprob.
In the tiny space left, we will congratulate him for his eloquent sound-bite that “we are waiting for Turkey to translate words into deeds.” We would just like to add that the Turks should take their time because we are against suffocating time frames.
