Aristo lays off 50 in wake of bad publicity

By George Psyllides

ARISTO DEVELOPERS on Monday blamed the dismissal of 50 workers mainly on the company’s legal troubles relating to a suspicious land zoning case that saw its owner charged, along with his wife and two others.

The company said it had tried to preserve jobs in the hope that its sales would recover. But it was impossible to do in the near future because the “unprecedented and unjust accusations and actions” have partially achieved their objective, dealing a serious blow to the status and reliability of the company.

Aristo Developers boss Theodoros Aristodemou, his wife and head of design Roulla, draftsman Christos Solomonides, and former municipal employee Savvas Savva had been charged in connection with suspected land-demarcation fraud case in Skali, Paphos.

It emerged that the plans for which the demarcation permits were issued were switched with new plans, which seemed to cede approximately 3,000 square metres, worth hundreds of thousands of euros, previously designated as green space, back to Aristo Developers.

The company spoke of minds who did not hesitate to smear, in the worse way, the “dignity of our society’s benefactors and pillars of the country’s economic development; neither did they hesitate in sacrificing the livelihood of tens of families who are inevitably led to unemployment.”

The company said because of the economic crisis in general and the legal trouble in particular, the company’s revenues fell considerably and despite its financial soundness, its operations shrank significantly.

The company said it was saddened to lay off staff and vowed to fight to turn the situation around.

“Despite the adverse conditions our company is going through, it will continue its course to new successes and we are certain that justice will prevail,” the company said.

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