By Charlie Charalambous
FORMER Bishop Chrysanthos’ American lawyer faces jail after refusing to disclose his assets and pay damages to a Danish investment company that he defrauded in a financial scam.
Richard Kirby, the lawyer for Danish investment company Anglo Nordic Capital, said a US district court had ruled that Lewis Rivlin would be put behind bars if he did not disclose his assets.
“We have tried to collect from the assets, but Rivlin has not been forthcoming, to say the least, and we have secured a court order for him to be jailed if he does not comply,” Kirby told the Cyprus Mail from his Washington law office yesterday.
In December, a US court ordered Rivlin to pay back the $1 million the Danish firm had invested with the promise of 500 per cent profits, as well as $77,000 interest on the sum.
Last week, a Washington court ordered Rivlin to pay an Ecuadorean charity its initial outlay of $1 million plus returns of $15 million promised in a similar get-rich-quick scheme.
The scam, which left the Fundacion Perez Pallares on the verge of bankruptcy, was almost identical to the one that ensnared Anglo Nordic.
Both involved disgraced bishop Chrysanthos, Kirby said yesterday.
“The funds were transferred into an account the bishop maintained at Hedley Finance, which had an office in Athens and Switzerland,” the lawyer said.
“It was almost an identical scam used against the foundation,” Kirby added.
But Kirby said he was still not sure whether Chrysanthos had been “a victim or an accomplice”.
He said the then bishop had been presented by Rivlin as a man who had inside information in the investment world and could secure huge profits for a cut.
“I’ve been a securities lawyer for 25 years and I can’t begin to explain what they were trying to do, but my clients were promised a 500 per cent net return, and Rivlin and the bishop would also get a chunk,” said Kirby.
Despite its successful court action, it emerged yesterday that the South American charity did not expect to receive the full $16 million it had been awarded.
A Washington District court judge last week ordered Rivlin to pay the money within thirty days, but the lawyer for the foundation, Larry Sharp, believes the total $16 million will not be paid.
“It is unlikely we will ever get the full amount, but we will try,” Sharp told the Cyprus Mail yesterday from his law office in Washington.
Sharp said the court had the power to seize Rivlin’s assets, but it was a question of “finding them”.
Rivlin had instructed the foundation to wire $1 million to a Greek bank account supposedly controlled by Chrysanthos.
The foundation for poor girls was told to expect a 1,600 per cent return within a matter of months, but the money never materialised.
Last year, the charity told the Cyprus Mail that it faced closure if it did not recover its investment, which had apparently been guaranteed by Chrysanthos.
Last week’s $16 million award against Rivlin did not come at the end of a full hearing, but after the defendant failed to co-operate with the court.
“Rivlin refused to provide discovery documents… he lost by default,” Sharp said.
Chrysanthos himself was not targeted in either Washington cases, but it is thought likely the disgraced cleric could stand trial in Cyprus on accusations of trying to defraud a UK-based investor of $3.7 million in a fraudulent pyramid investment.
Earlier this year, Attorney-general Alecos Markides said there was only a five per cent chance that the former bishop, who resigned last November amid a tide of corruption allegations, would not end up in the dock, as 95 per cent of the investigation was complete.
Chrysanthos, who faces over 30 allegations of defrauding investors in multi- million financial scams, is barred from leaving the island in view of pending legal proceedings.
The disgraced bishop faces possible charges of conspiracy to defraud and attempting to obtain $3.7 million by deception.
Other cases under investigation include allegations by two Portuguese investors that they were swindled out of $1.5 million by the former bishop.
Last November, Chrysanthos resigned from his post only days before he was due to be hauled up before the Holy Synod to answer an eight-point indictment issued against him.
A Holy Synod investigative committee drew up the indictment, which charged Chrysanthos with acting out of greed, profiteering through currency speculation, abusing his ecclesiastical position and making dubious financial deals with unreliable characters.
The Holy Synod accepted his resignation in an apparent damage-limitation exercise, but banned him from all ecclesiastical duties for two years.
