Granddad, 88, who married artiste aged 23, for his son’s sake, has pangs of conscience

PANGS of conscience forced an 88-year-old grandfather to own up to entering into a sham marriage with his son’s 23-year-old Russian lover so that the woman, a former cabaret dancer, could stay in Cyprus.

The Russian woman was deported on Thursday after the grandfather spilled the beans to immigration officers.

As Politis newspaper reported yesterday, the unnamed father and his 50-year-old son resorted to the bizarre arrangement because the son’s wife would not grant him a divorce so he could marry his new love – the Russian artiste – and enable her to stay in Cyprus.

The 88-year-old and the 23-year-old went through a civil marriage ceremony at a Limassol suburb on September 14 last year.

The arranged marriage would quite likely have excited nothing more than comments from neighbours had the ‘newly-wed’ 88-year-old not felt so guilty that he had to go to the immigration department.

“I love my son, but I cannot bear the pangs of conscience,” he reportedly told immigration officers. The Russian artiste was duly arrested and put on the next plane home.

Fearful of a rise in arranged marriages, the immigration department last year introduced tough new rules to clamp down on sham unions aimed at ensuring foreign nationals can stay on the island.

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.