Cypriot shipping tycoon dies at 81

LUCAS Haji-Ioannou, the father of easyJet founder Stelios Haji-Iioannou died yesterday in Athens aged 81, after a long illness.

The self-made Cypriot shipping tycoon was born in Pedhoulas village in 1927, and was known as the “Tanker King”.

Haji-Ioannou was the eldest of 12 and dreamed of a life at sea. He went out to work to help the family when he was 16. He first went to sea in 1948 when he was 21, and began to lay the foundations for his shipping empire.

By the 1980s Haji-Ioannou had acquired 50 tankers and employed more than 2,000 families.

Married to his wife Nedi since 1958, the couple had three children Polis, Klelia and Stelios.

He lived the last years of his life out of the public eye, devoting himself to his family and grandchildren, and the many charities he was patron to.

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.