By Anthony O. Miller
A SUPREME Court judge’s ruling yesterday annulled decisions by the Council of Ministers that let Thanos Hotels build its five-star-deluxe Anassa Hotel in the environmentally sensitive Akamas Peninsula.
Thanos lawyer Kyriacos Michaelides dismissed the ruling by lone Supreme Court Judge Frixos Nicolaides, and said Thanos “will file an appeal this week” against it.
The Technical Chamber (Etek) filed the lawsuit in April 1996 to challenge planning permit relaxations by a Council of Ministers committee that let Thanos, the family firm of former Foreign Minister Alecos Michaelides, build the luxury hotel.
Michaelides was forced to resign from the government after months of negative publicity in Cyprus and abroad stemming from the ministerial committee’s relaxations allowing his hotel complex in an area earmarked for the Akamas National Park.
Etek Chairman Nicos Mesaritis said the ruling “makes the decision of the (ministerial) committee… void. This means the (Thanos Hotel) building there now is illegal.”
The court ruled that the planning relaxations “are not good decisions if they satisfy private interests,” Mesaritis said. Under the law, “they must satisfy public interests,” and in his opinion, the relaxations favoured only Michaelides’ private interests.
“We are satisfied,” Mesaritis said. “If nobody appeals, the decision is final.” Asked if that would mean the multi-million-pound luxury hotel had to come down, he replied: “This is a terrible question to answer. I don’t want to think about it.”
Lawyer Michaelides, who is no blood- or marriage relation to his client, dismissed the very suggestion that the posh hotel might be torn down, declaring: “This is not going to happen.”
Not only is he appealing for a final ruling by a five-judge Supreme Court panel as “an interested party,” but Michaelides said he was “sure the government will appeal” the ruling as well.
Lawyer Michaelides said that Judge Nicolaides voided the Thanos building permit because government ministry employees and town planning officials were present as experts at the ministerial committee meeting that eased the permit requirements.
According to him, Judge Nicolaides reasoned that the presence of these non- ministers at the ministerial meeting might have influenced them to grant the permit relaxations to one of their own – Michaelides, who was then foreign minister.
However, he contended, the government employees and town planning officials were supposed to be present at some point in that same committee meeting to give the ministers expert advice on the contentious matter.
While Etek Manager Dinos Chrysostomou said Etek could not be “happy” at the ruling’s impact on the hotel, he said the organisation, which represents 5, 500 working engineers in Cyprus, was pleased that the court acknowledged Etek’s right to file such lawsuits.
Thanos lawyer Michaelides roundly condemned this notion, declaring, “Etek has no right to file recourse and annul building permits,” and suggesting the kind of chaos that might result if Etek could challenge the permits of any buildings it chose to.
The five-star Anassa, whose daily rates range from £90 for a room to £1,100 for the presidential suite, generated considerable opposition among environmental groups, as well as local support in the immediate area.
