By Patroclos
YOU HAVE to admire AKEL’s chutzpah. Even when it admits its involvement in a blatant case of corruption, pocketing €234,000 from a businessman who had dealings with a party-controlled SGO, its leader insists “there was nothing reprehensible.”
After all, as its leader Andros explained, the money AKEL’s Larnaca branch received would help members repay loans they had taken out or guaranteed for Alki football club, of which the benefactor, businessman Nicos Lillis was the chairman.
It was all done, according to Andros, “for the love of their football club,” which, supposedly, made corruption morally and legally acceptable. Andros could be credited with enough stupidity to sincerely believe, but he was most definitely taking us for a ride when he said the party did not know where the money it was given had come from.
In fact, the Dromolaxia land scam could not have been pulled off, without the active help of the AKEL government and the CyTA board under its control. Who issued permits, approved the change of building coefficients, instructed the KYP cops to fabricate reports about the Turkish Cypriot owner and sanctioned the purchase of the land, at a grossly inflated price, by the CyTA workers’ pension fund?
IN HIS statement to police, Lillis even gave the exact amounts of the bribes he allegedly paid to union officials, the CyTA chairman and an AKEL deputy, who reportedly collected a cool one million.
The latter probably did not pocket the amount, as personal greed is not part of the Akelite DNA, but gave it to the football club he loved because it was deep in debt.
Of course the corrupt commies knew where the money came from. It was their reward for helping the deal materialise. This would also explain why AKEL is so fanatically opposed to the privatisation of the profit-making SGOs – it would deprive its beloved football clubs of much-needed funds.
Apart from making possible kickbacks to members of AKEL, who have been funding Alki, CyTA also wastes huge amounts of money every year in direct sponsorship of commie-controlled and other football clubs. It would be much more difficult, if not impossible, for parties to plunder the ‘public wealth’, as commies like to call CyTA and EAC, once it is privatised.
SPEAKING of football clubs, Miltiades Neophytou, owner of a big contracting firm that was very close to AKEL and loaned the party’s flagship football club Omonia several millions of euro is now facing financial problems, like most businessmen, and wants his money back.
Needless, to say Omonia is bust and with SGOs unlikely to be buying big properties in the foreseeable future he is unlikely to get any of his money back. He may have better luck with comrade Tof, whose house in Engomi, Neophytou’s firm, did major improvement works to, but has yet to be paid.
The comrade believed this was a gift, but Neophytou, who has fallen out big time with the great leader, will now demand payment. One skettos drinker, who popped in last week, said that the contractor had seen a Nicosia lawyer to enquire about the possibility of legal action against the comrade, seeking payment.
We have been unable to establish whether the contractor would also be seeking payment for the work his company had done at the Tof dacha in Kellaki.
THE WAR between Governor Panicos and the government continued this week, with the professor leaking to the press a letter, from EU Commissioner Olli Rehn to our finance minister, reminding him that Article 130 of the EU Convention safeguarded the independence of national central banks.
Whenever the professor feels a little pressure he reports the government to the ECB or the EU which send letters supporting his independence and warning politicians not to interfere in his work. A shame our European allies never thought it necessary to remind the AKEL government of the Governor’s independence when it was issuing him instructions what to say and do.
Panicos was happy to loyally obey party instructions back then, and did not deem it necessary to report the government to the EU, but now he has decided he is an independent official, even though he still follows the advice of his bolshie PA, the AKEL apparatchik Elena Markadji, a secretary that exercises more power than a CB director.
SOME IN the government believe that Markadji, with a true Akelite’s pathological hatred of Nik and DISY, has been urging the professor to create difficulties for the government whenever he has an opportunity.
It is difficult to accept this theory, because no Governor and professor of economics to boot would listen to what his secretary would tell him, especially now that her party has been removed from government and her powers diminished. Panicos could be a loyal and obedient Akelite by choice.
Incidentally la Markadji is so loyal to the Central Bank that when she slipped in the building and suffered a minor injury, a few years ago, she sued for compensation. I do not know whether she was awarded any damages from her employer or subsequently withdrew the suit demanding some 50 grand.
AT THE BANK of Cyprus, despite the professor’s warning that he could yet withdraw the approval he eventually gave to the new directors, the board has started work.
Its most important decision so far, has been to hire a foreign CEO from abroad. I suspect the Russian directors, having seen the bank’s NPLs want as CEO a foreigner who will not feel obliged to do any favours to the big businessmen that the owe hundreds of millions. A smart move and an indication that the Russians want to put the bank on right path.
The decision however could create big problems for the board. A successful foreign banker would not come cheap and the board may have to pay a very big annual salary plus bonuses, for a new CEO, especially if he or she already has a job.
How would the bank employees’ union ETYK, and its appointee, the chairman of BoC board, react to the payment of whopping big salary, especially once the new CEO tries to reduce costs – a necessity – through more redundancies and pay cuts?
STAYING on the subject of Russians and the BoC, the former biggest shareholder of the bank, Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev was in Kyproulla recently. He was spotted in the crowd of the APOEL-AEK match in Nicosia on Monday night, by a CyBC sports reporter, who informed us about his sighting the next day.
According to the reporter Rybolovlev was at the match with his “close associate Andreas Hadjikyriacos” who had been a member of the APOEL board. This gave rise to rumours that Rybolovlev, who owns French club AS Monaco, might want to buy APOEL, but I suspect it was nothing more than wishful thinking.
Ryobolovlev’s last investment in Kyproulla did not go so well – he had bought €200 million worth of BoC shares at about €5 each.
POOR OLD Prez Nik came under attack from our bash-patriotic nay-sayers for his alleged failure to use the full armoury of Cyprob clichés and slogans, bequeathed to him by his predecessors, when he addressed the UN General Assembly for the first time on Thursday.
The used-rhetoric salesmen were livid with Nik, because, as EDEK’s spokesman Demetris Papadakis complained, the ‘condemnation of Turkey’ was absent from his ‘cautious’ speech aimed at ‘not upsetting’ the occupiers. In previous years, the use of the condemnatory Cyprob clichés was a sure-fire method of upsetting members of the Turkish delegation at the UN.
The General Assembly “was offered as an opportunity to say certain things by their name, to condemn Turkey for its continuing aggressive behaviour and to inform the international community about the continuing crimes by Turkey,” a disappointed Papadakis said on Friday.
Self-regarding, green, freedom fighter Perdikis saw not a single sign of goodwill by Turkey to justify Nik’s decision to adopt a “mild tone and appear even more conciliatory than previous presidents.”
In fact he saw “very negative developments” in New York, even though he was still sleeping well at night in contrast to Papadakis who was being kept awake at night because “the nightmare of a new version of the Annan plan is visible.”
THE LILLIKAS movement was also having Annan nightmares over Nik’s dealings in New York. It was disgusted that Nik referred to Turkey’s foreign minister as a ‘friend’ instead of as a ‘conqueror’ and made no mention of the occupation in his speech.
“We would have expected Mr Anastasiades, once the Turkish delegation has walked out of the General Assembly and did not hear his speech, to defend the dignity of the Cyprus Republic and Cypriot Hellenism,” said a statement.
If Lillikas was president he would have taken a platoon of fully-armed National Guardsmen to the General Assembly to defend our dignity. And if the platoon was not allowed into the building he could have fought for our dignity by bombarding the General Assembly with the full force of the Cyprob clichés that ‘put Turkey in dock’ and make her want to withdraw the occupation troops’.
THE CYPROB is not the only issue that brings out the disgusting populism in our enlightened politicians. Now they also have the high interest rates charged by the banks to campaign against. At the start of the week DISY chief Averof took the initiative lower interest rates, which admittedly are too high.
It is not such a brilliant idea given the shortage of money. If the banks are refusing to give loans at interests of seven and eight per cent now, what is the likelihood that they would do so when these are lowered? They would lend even less, unless deputies then pass a law forcing the banks to lend x amount money at the new interest rate.
THINGS got worse as the week progressed. AKEL deputy Yiannos Lamaris drafted a bill by which a person who can prove he cannot make loan repayments could apply to court to suspend the repayment of the loan.
He would be able to do this only once all efforts to reach a settlement with the bank have been exhausted. Predictably this phenomenally stupid law proposal was supported by all the parties, as it would allegedly protect home-owners.
It gives a very strong incentive to people not to repay their bank loans and not to reach a settlement with the bank, waiting instead for three or four years for the court to reach a decision on whether to suspend loan repayments. Even if the application is rejected, the borrower would have been given three to four years of not repaying his loan without the danger of his collateral being seized by the bank.
Such a lunatic law would dramatically increase the banks’ NPLs – as if they were not enough as things are – and their capital needs which could be covered by another haircut of deposits. That is assuming they would be left with enough deposits to give them another hair-cut.
BUT WHAT do you expect from deputies who on Thursday, decided to pander to a few hundred teenagers that left their classes on Monday and Tuesday to protest about the introduction of bus fares for students and pensioners from October 2.
In another show of populist stupidity, caring deputies decided that the fares should be introduced from next year. Incredibly, on Friday the communication minister announced the charging of bus fares would be suspended for another month. How would the government explain this decision to the troika with which it had agreed the introduction of bus fares so as to reduce the huge losses incurred by the bus service?
Will it tell the troikans that it did not introduce the fares because a bunch of 13, 14- and 15-year-olds would not let it? In Kyproulla, high school kids are the experts in public transport policy and pricing, which why the government and legislature always listens to them.
THE PASYDY chief has sent us a letter informing us that he would be reporting our poor establishment to the Commissioner for the Protection of Rights of the Child and to the Journalistic Ethics Committee, for last week’s “unacceptable references to our members and members of their families.”
Dear Glafcos took exception to our remarks about the PASYDY summer camp, because they showed a lack of respect for children. I am fast running out of space so I will give more details next week. For now I can only repeat the wise words of Andros, that “there was nothing reprehensible.”
