Arrest warrant issued for Vgenopoulos

A PAPHOS court yesterday issued an arrest warrant for former Laiki Bank executive chairman Andreas Vgenopoulos and the bank’s former CEO Efthimios Bouloutas.

The arrest warrants will be executed immediately on May 30 unless the two defendants appear for a court hearing scheduled on that date.

Vgenopoulos and Bouloutas, both Greek nationals, are facing charges of misleading investors into buying high-risk securities. They previously ignored summons to appear in court, citing legal technicalities.

Claiming he was defrauded of €108,000, a Paphos-based man has filed a private criminal case against Laiki as a legal entity, the bank’s former brass, and former Central Bank governor Athanasios Orphanides.

The plaintiff, Stavros Mavrosavvas, is one of hundreds of depositors claiming to have been misled by the banks into putting their savings in high-yield securities.

Hundreds of people were affected when the island’s two biggest lenders, the Bank of Cyprus and Laiki, stopped paying interest and blocked access to the investors’ capital following losses on a Greek sovereign debt write-down in late 2011.  The total amount put in securities is said to be around €1.4 billion.

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