By Andria Kades
Attorney-general Costas Clerides has ordered a criminal investigation into how Cyprus was dragged into what almost became a landmark EU case involving an Irish headquartered company and a Polish worker who appeared to have initiated legal proceedings but in fact knew nothing about them.
The case concerned Atlanco – an Irish headquartered recruitment company registered in Cyprus – and a Polish employee who was registered with them and had worked in jobs all around Europe but never in Cyprus.
The mindboggling case, brought to light through an investigation by Irish public broadcaster RTÉ’s Documentary on One unit in a radio documentary called The Case that Never Was, questioned the very foundation of the law concerning social security payments for people working in two or more EU member states, and who is paying for them – the country they work in or the country where the company is registered.
Just before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) was set to debate the landmark case -Bogdan Chain v. Atlanco Ltd – which was expected to set a precedent for future cases, it was withdrawn by Cyprus. The case had originally been filed with the Nicosia district court but it had referred it to the ECJ for a ruling due to the complexities of the subject matter.
Also embroiled were two Cypriot law firms who, despite working against each other in court, were allegedly receiving orders from the same Belgian-based legal firm.
The roots of this complex case date back to August 2007 when Atlanco Ltd, a subsidiary of the Atlanco Rimec Group, was registered in Cyprus.
Although it was headquartered in Ireland, the recruitment company would hire employees and often send them to northern European states paying them the rates of southern European countries.
The work was temporary, lasting for a few months and often concerned practical jobs like truck driving and carpentry.
It had about 50,000 people on its records.
Employees were deployed across Europe for short periods of time. With Atlanco Ltd registered here, the workers’ social insurance payments were paid for in Cyprus – which has very beneficial rates compared to other member states.
Atlanco filled A1 forms required to satisfy the payments and submitted them to the labour ministry, which approved them thus granting the social security payments to the company’s workers.
One of these workers was Bogdan Chain, a Polish man who found work through the company in 2009 and was sent to countries like Norway, Finland and Romania.
Although Cyprus held the responsibility for his social insurance payments, when it came to work he did in Romania starting November 26 in 2011 and Norway since January 3, 2012, which lasted for about two months, Cyprus refused to pay his social insurance.
Court documents filed showed that Chain took Atlanco to court in Cyprus in order to receive his due contributions. But the Nicosia district court on April 16, 2014 referred the case to the European Court of Justice.
Chain was represented by Christophoros Christophi while the company’s lawyer was Achilleas Demetriades.
During RTE’s investigation, journalists managed to locate Chain in Poland, who in a surprising twist said he had absolutely no knowledge of the case and had never taken Atlanco to court despite issues with his social insurance payments.
Apparently, although his wage slips revealed the contributions were deducted from his pay cheque, Norwegian authorities, for instance, said there was no evidence of his paying any whilst he worked there and he had to pay €4,000 – essentially paying twice.
After he suffered a heart attack in early 2014 and applied for disability payment from the Polish authorities, he was told “records of his Atlanco-related social insurance payments are incomplete” and thus he could not receive the financial help he needed.
Despite these difficulties, he adamantly denied having anything to do with a court case against Atlanco. And, had RTE journalists never turned up at his door, if his claims are true, he may have never found out.
In a further twist, RTE reported that the court case was initially going to be filed under the name Fijalkowski.
“For reasons still unclear the Fijalkowski name was subsequently removed and simply replaced with the name of Chain,” the RTE report said.
This begged the question as to how Christophi, who was acting as Chain’s lawyer, was representing him in court.
Although Christophi did not respond to a request for comment from the Sunday Mail, the RTE broadcast has him equally shocked by the news that Chain was clueless about the case.
“Of course I’m surprised. I’m appalled and I’m telling you I don’t want to believe this is the case,” Christophi told the Irish journalist.
Apparently, Christophi had been contacted by a law firm in Belgium called Lorenz who said they were acting on Chain’s behalf. Asked if he had seen any form of evidence that Chain had brought the case such as signed letters or documents, he replied that he had not.
“It is normal in the sense that you get instructions from a law firm. It is assumed they are authorised to behave, act on behalf of the client…This is common practice between law firms,” Christophi told RTE.
According to the report, a series of emails were then exchanged between Christophi and Chain himself but no action was taken to stop the case.
Meanwhile the case was still ongoing on a European level and had sparked the interest of many other countries including Belgium, the Czech Republic, Ireland, France, Netherlands, Finland and Sweden.
The issue for Cyprus was that its own social insurance fund was being drained for work not even done on the island, simply because a company registered here had recruited the employees.
Getting desperate, Chain wrote to the European Court of Justice expressing his wish to withdraw the case and saying he had nothing to do with it.
According to RTE, the court acknowledged the letter but ignored his request and proceeded with the case.
This was where Nicoletta Charalambidou, human rights lawyer in Nicosia, specialising in European Union law got involved.
Bringing the matter to the attention of the attorney-general, she represented Chain for the first time in May 2015 at a Nicosia court where she withdrew the case. As a result, the case fell through on a European level with Cyprus withdrawing the Nicosia district court’s initial request for a ruling.
On June 11, 2015, the EU court issued a short statement saying “the president of the First Chamber has ordered that the case be removed from the register.”
It was however, a close call.
Only a few days earlier, the advocate general of the European Court of Justice Yves Bot revealed his proposals on the case which in a nutshell outlined that employees needed a safeguarded system of social insurance payments no matter where they worked in the bloc.
States risk the system being abused as when companies fill the A1 forms they cannot necessarily predict in which state the employee will work or for how long, but as long as the country receiving the application is stringent enough with the examinations there should be no problems.
Charalambidou, asked by the Sunday Mail if Cypriot authorities could have done more in regards to Atlanco, said they were required to assess whether it had an office here, if it was appropriately staffed and if it really concerned temporary migrant workers.
“They could have done more,” she conceded. However after receiving complaints, they took action and stopped approving the A1 forms for Atlanco.
The company, in a separate development took the case to Supreme Court but that too fell through after the company was dissolved in January 2015.
Lawyer Achilleas Demetriades, who represented Atlanco, said he did not wish to comment on the case as the company had dissolved and was no longer functioning.
As of now, the criminal investigation on the island is ongoing with police now trying to cooperate with Belgian and Polish authorities where they will try to locate Chain and Lorenz.
What will happen now remains to be seen, however the certainty is, had RTE not located Chain then the European Court of Justice would have made a decision on a landmark case, set to be a precedent for future cases but based on what would have been apparently bogus grounds.
Listen to the documentary here
