OUR HEARTFELT sympathy goes out to Mrs Ermioni Kyprianou – known as Noni among her friends of the Strovolos salons – who this week was subjected to the humiliation of applying to court to get some of her money in order to feed and clothe her children; and to pay her beautician’s bill.
Noni is the wife of the millionaire businessman, Lykourgos Kyprianou, boss and founder of Global Consolidator, who, is wanted in US for committing one of the biggest stock markets frauds in history. His Nasdaq-listed company AremisSoft went bust in 2002, with investors losing over $500 million.
Lykourgos and his partner Roys Poyiadjis (see item below) made hundreds of millions of bucks from this scam, which they stashed away in secret bank accounts. The US authorities have charge Lyk with securities fraud, money laundering and several other fraud-related offences, but he has refused to appear in a US court.
In fact, he has avoided leaving Cyprus, where he is still considered a sharp businessman and secretly admired for pulling a fast one over the dumb Yanks, for fear of being arrested by foreign authorities and being extradited to the US for trial. He and Noni still get invited to the high society parties and pose proudly for the magazine photographers.
On our plantation, we are totally amoral on issues of argent. If you have made lots of moollah you automatically earn respect and social status, regardless of how you got it.
You could have been pimping 15-year-olds or stealing the pension cheques of old grannies, but once you have money in the bank, a couple of BMWs in the garage and a mansion with pool and gardens, you are welcome into the bosom of our glamour-set.
However, the 6,000 or so ripped-off Yank investors have taken legal action against Lyk in Cyprus, securing an injunction back in July which froze his world-wide assets as well as those of companies and people affiliated to him. This means that poor old Lyk and Noni cannot touch the millions they have in their bank accounts.
For how much longer their grocer will give them credit so they can feed their children is unknown. When he cuts the credit, we will organise a radio-marathon for them and I am sure the Cypriot public, including Global investors and shareholders, will give generously in order to help Lyk put some food on the family table.
IF ONLY it were that simple. Noni is accustomed to a princess’ lifestyle and will take nothing less, which is why she applied to court requesting that she be allowed to take a small amount of cash every month in order to maintain her family’s lifestyle. As she said in her application, failure of the court to grant her request would mean “my family will suffer terrible difficulties and will be unable to meet its economic needs.”
Her family’s economic needs amount to £20,600 a month and include (all figures are in Cyprus pounds): £3,500 for electricity, phone and heating bills, £1,500 travel costs, £1,100 house insurance, £1,200 for domestic servants, £800 for the kids’ school fees, £1,000 for personal care and £4,000 on clothing.
Four thousand pounds a month on clothing must put Noni in the Imelda Marcos class of shopaholics and I bet she has more pairs of shoes than the former first lady of the Philippines. You have to feel genuinely sorry for someone accustomed to doing her clothes shopping in the exclusive boutiques of Stassicratous St now having to go to Fashion Market stores in search of bargain clothing.
And horror of horrors, she will actually be seen in these cheap stores for the plebs, as she will not have any servants to do her shopping for her. The Kyprianou kids being dressed in cheap, ill-fitting, Fashion Market clothes is, presumably, one of the “terrible difficulties” they will suffer if the court does not show a little sympathy and compassion for Lyk and the princess of Strovolos.
MEANWHILE, Lyk’s AremisSoft partner, former CEO Roys Poyiadjis, who reached an out-of-court settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, last June, agreeing to pay back 200 million bucks, is in the Sates trying to enter high society. You’ve got to give him respect for his chutzpah.
Tuesday’s New York Post reported that Poyadjis re-appeared in the Hamptons, the playground of mega-wealthy East Cost Yanks. Not only was he in the Hamptons, attempting to mingle with the rich and powerful, but his Poyadjis Foundation had its very own hospitality tent at the exclusive Tony Mercedes-Benz Polo Challenge in Bridgehampton – described as one of the “summer’s hottest events” – incurring the wrath of the old club members.
A livid Bridgehampton polo fan was quoted as saying on a website: “Here is someone who has been forced to pay one of the highest personal restitutions in the history of fraud, money laundering, insider trading and conspiracy. He did not spend a single day in prison.” And now he was hob-nobbing with members of the US elite.
We would be interested to know what the Poyadjis Foundation actually does. Could it have been set up to offer financial help to the families of shareholders of bankrupt public companies? That would be a nice touch and show that Roys cares. If it gives money to charitable causes, perhaps it can help out his former partner Lyk whose “family is suffering terrible difficulties”.
IN THE END, I fear our Ethnarch will not be sharing a meal of souvla with Mehmet Ali Talat at Commissar Christofias’ holiday home in Kellaki. Despite the efforts of the Commissar to organise this ice-breaking social meeting, the extremists on our side kicked up such a fuss that he has had to abandon his noble initiative.
A sad development, considering the Commissar had almost managed to persuade the Ethnarch to attend as well. Tassos, who called up Astra radio to speak about the matter, said he was not “dogmatically opposed to a meeting of a social nature with Mr Talat.” But of course he would need to know beforehand what would be the object of the meeting and what would be discussed.
Isn’t he a true star? He was not “dogmatically opposed” to such a meeting, but whether he would accept an invitation was another matter. I would not have been surprised if he demanded to know what meat would be used for the souvla. Tassos would probably have insisted it was pork and then accused Talat of offending his host because he did not eat any meat.
THE EMBARRASSMENT suffered by the Commissar in his pathetic attempt to promote himself as a mediating statesman was a joy to behold. His stupid idea was not only pooh-poohed publicly by Tassos’ spokesmen, but all his alliance partners, all of whom, in stark contrast to the Ethnarch, were dogmatically opposed to such a bash.
Even the Commissar ended up not being too keen on his souvla initiative. In defending it and accusing his detractors of being extremists afraid of their shadows, he also thought it necessary publicly to offend Talat for provoking confrontation and attacking Tassos. What sort of host publicly insults the man he has invited to lunch? Is this what communist hospitality consists of?
Two days after the souvla crisis, the government announced an international campaign to report Talat’s opposition to a solution. All he was after was recognition of the pseudo-planntation. The CyBC’s diplomatic correspondent, George Iacovou, broke the news with the revelation that Talat’s “mask is slipping” adding that Turkey’s puppet in Cyprus would be reported to foreign governments for working against re-unification.
Our Ethnarch, in contrast, is spending all his time thinking of ways to improve the political climate so that there can be a resumption of peace talks. Not being dogmatically opposed to a social meeting with Talat is one way of improving the climate, while reporting him to world as a champion of partition is another. The resumption of talks, I fear, is just round the cor
ner.
THE FRENCH have put our Ethnarch in a bit of a fix by encouraging him to exercise his veto right when the European Council discusses whether Turkey has satisfied the conditions set for the start of accession talks on October 3. The French PM had said it is inconceivable for Turkey to start accession talks when it refuses to recognise one of the EU member states it would be negotiating with.
France’s ambassador to Cyprus met Tassos two weeks ago and handed him an internal foreign ministry memo, stating his country’s position on the matter. “We hope you will not disappoint us,” he is reported to have told our Ethnarch, who is already being criticised by the bash patriotic brigade for being afraid to use his veto right.
The French embassy was furious that the memo given by the ambassador to Tassos had been leaked to Simerini, which presented it as French government document that had been distributed to all EU member-states. Embassy officials were at pains to explain that it was nothing more than an internal foreign ministry memo and did not reflect France policy on the start of accession talks.
Could Tassos have leaked the document to Simerini, considering it would increase public pressure on him to block the start of Turkey’s accession talks over its refusal to recognise the plantation? It could not have been leaked by the embassy, could it? It is obvious what the French are trying to do, but Tassos has already made up his mind and will not do the dirty work for President Chirac.
France were taking a stand on principle, argued Commerce Minister George Lillikas, who, being a man of high principle himself, was ideally-placed to judge the motives of a proven idealist like Chirac.
THE ETHNARCH is said to have struck a deal with the idealistic PM of our bad demon Britain, Tony Blair, during his visit to London in July. He is said to have assured Blair that he would not be using the right to veto, in exchange for Britain laying off him with regard to the Cyprob. He would support the start of accession talks so long as Britain stopped putting pressure on his government about the resumption of talks.
He has ignored calls for a National Council meeting because he does not want the possibility of a veto being discussed. Tassos knows that if the Council meets, he will have Perdikis, Omirou and Koutsou demanding that he exercise the right to veto and he would have to tell them that he had no intention of doing so. He would then have all of them plus Simerini on his back, accusing him of bowing to the Turks and of lacking national pride.
WE HAVE often written about our top circulation daily Phil’s habit of publishing library pictures with its hard news stories. In Thursday’s edition, there was a report about a 26-year-old Iranian asylum seeker who ran out onto the Limassol streets stark naked to escape from a group of his countrymen who had tried to rape him.
The story was accompanied by a picture of a naked man in the street, with his bottom pixellated so we could not see it properly. Did Phil’s photographer just happen to be at the scene of the crime to take a picture of the naked Iranian running on the street or was this a picture from a photo library? The paper disingenuously did not say if the man in the picture was the Iranian.
That it chose to pixellate his bottom gave the impression that the man in the photo was the Iranian and the ethical paper did not want to reveal his identity. As if anyone would have recognised him by seeing his bottom.
SOME TEN days ago, the Financial Times ran a supplement on Cyprus, which greatly offended the Cyprus Weekly. Two editions ago, the paper carried a story, without a byline, accusing the FT supplement of biased reporting. It did not leave the matter there. In its last issue, it asked why the Commerce Ministry, which had placed two ads, had financed a supplement which not only promoted the north (four of the six pictures were from the north) but also attacked the Ethnarch. The paper’s “legendary objectivity is a lot of rubbish”, concluded a Weekly writer, implying that objectivity involved writing in favour of the government or politician who pays for the adverts in the supplement. The reports may have been biased, but I fear the Weekly forgot to mention a little nugget of information that was quite interesting. One of the writers who had contributed a report to the biased FT supplement was none other than the Weekly’s shareholder, director and political correspondent, Andreas Hadjipapas. Was his report biased or was it objective? We need to know.
