Parliament will vote on Friday on a Solidarity Fund to provide aid to Laiki depositors affected by the 2013 bail, the depositor’s group Sykala announced on Saturday.
The group said they recently attended two meetings of the House Finance Committee where law proposals were jointly tabled by Disy, Diko and separately by the Solidarity Movement and the Green Party.
The proposals look to alleviate the economic difficulties and challenges from the 2013 bail-in, and their final draft will be decided on Monday, Sykala said.
The fund will deal with individuals who have been adversely affected by the decisions of 2013, and at the plenary on Friday another proposal will be submitted which will deal with legal entities / companies.
The plenary is expected to refer this proposal to the Parliamentary Finance Committee for discussion.
Sykala said that so far, the fund has received €55 million in cash, and is expected to receive state-owned real-estate property valued at approximately €125 million.
Meanwhile, Sykala also said that the district courts in Cyprus are also expected to decide on the ‘merger’ of cases filed by individuals over the bail in in the coming weeks.
“About a year ago, we filed an application for a ‘merger’ of the lawsuits, so that a small number of pilot cases could be heard, the decisions of which would apply to the other cases. Recently the first hearing of our application took place, during which the positions of the lawyers on each side were filed in writing,” Sykala said.
According to the depositors, the government appears to have given their consent through the Attorney General’s office, while Laiki Bank, the Central Bank, and Laiki’s auditors are calling for the cases to be tried separately.
Sykala claims that if the cases are examined separately it will take decades for the process to be completed.
“They will also block the judiciary because there are not enough judges to handle such a volume of cases,” the depositors said.
Sykala added that they hoped the court would decide to merge the cases taking into account the costly legal fees of the individuals, and the time it would take to try the cases.
