Press Archive - Beyond Contempt

Conor O’Dwyer arrested outside AG’s office

Protest Outside Attorney General's office

A British man who has been involved in a long and exhausting property dispute in Cyprus that lasted over 15 years, was arrested on Monday outside the attorney-general’s office in Nicosia, but was later released without charge.

Armed with a megaphone, Conor O’Dwyer was protesting the court’s failure to compensate him for the expenses he accumulated over the years when he was the witness and victim in an assault case brought against two developers in 2008.

According to O’Dwyer’s lawyer, Yiannos Georgiades, O’Dwyer was only offered €1,000 as compensation for his numerous journeys to Cyprus from the UK at the time. He also had to pay for his own accommodation, as well as his family’s.

“Conor has been protesting for days outside the Attorney-general’s office,” Georgiades told Cyprus Mail. “Today, he decided to step up his protest and moved to the main entrance of the building when police intervened and placed him under arrest, officially for blocking the attorney-general’s main entrance.”

Georgiades, who believes the arrest was a warning sign sent by the authorities, said O’Dwyer’s reasons to protest are absolutely justified.

“He spent thousands of euros travelling back and forth to Cyprus, as he had to appear in court several times. He eventually won the assault case, but nevertheless he was never properly compensated,” the attorney said.

Georgiades said he was also informed that the police are investigating O’Dwyer for allegedly mocking the Supreme Court in 2019, when he was protesting outside the premises holding a placard reading “Kangaroo Court”.

Back in February, the Supreme Court rejected O’Dwyer’s defamation appeal. He had appealed the case filed by developer Christoforos Karayiannas and Son Ltd accusing him of breach of contract and of defamation.

The Supreme Court also reaffirmed the initial €60,000 in damages to the company, a national record, for calling the developers ‘liars’ on his blog.

Around 15 years ago, O’Dwyer sold his house in the UK when he decided to buy property in Cyprus.

According to O’Dwyer, after having already paid €113,000 for the property in the Famagusta area, the developer decided to sell his house to another British family at a higher price.

He was then forced to rent a flat in London and undergo a lengthy legal battle with the developers.

Georgiades said O’Dwyer has no intention of stopping his fight for justice and confirmed that last week he filed a case against Cyprus in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

By Jonathan Shkurko | Cyprus Mail | November 16, 2020

See the original article on the Cyprus Mail for comments from the expat community.

Briton loses appeal in property dispute, vows to take case to ECHR

The Supreme Court on Friday rejected the appeal against a defamation by Conor O’Dwyer, a British man who has been involved in a lengthy court battle over a property he bought in the Famagusta district in 2005.

O’Dwyer was also ordered to pay a €3,000 in legal fees. He had appealed the case filed by developer Christoforos Karayiannas and Son Ltd accusing him of breach of contract and of defamation.

The supreme court overruled O’Dwyer’s appeal and reaffirmed the initial €60,000 in damages to the company, a national record, for calling the developers ‘liars’ on his blog.

In addition to that, the court denied the Briton compensation for the many trips to Cyprus he has had to take over the years to fight his case, as well as for the rent on his flat in London.

Around 15 years ago, O’Dwyer sold his house in the UK when he decided to buy property in Cyprus.

According to O’Dwyer, after having already paid €113,000 for the property in the Famagusta area, the developer decided to sell his house to another British family at a higher price.

He was then forced to rent a flat in London and endure a lengthy legal battle with the developers.

He eventually received compensation. But his lawyer Yiannos Georgiades said: “The compensation the court gave my client is very small because the judges chose the lowest evaluation for the property, refusing to evaluate it when the developers resold it to another client,” he said.

Georgiades said had the judges decided to evaluate the house at the time the case was heard, which would have come in a €398,200, O’Dwyer would have received compensation of €119,000 on top of the €113,000 he paid to the developers, instead of just the €28,000 he received as compensation.

With regards to the defamation suit, O’Dwyer’s lawyer said that “one of the staples of a free society is that people should be able to speak freely. Statements that express opinion are not actionable as defamation no matter how offensive, vituperative and unreasonable they may be”.

“Moreover, in the context of statements pertaining to issues of consumer advocacy, personal opinions about goods and services, like the ones Conor published on his blog, are matters of legitimate public concern and protected speech,” Georgiades added.

The lawyer called the situation “absurd”. He said a UK citizen decided to buy a property in Cyprus and sold his home there to do so but ended up seeing his hard-earned money kept by the developers, forcing him to rent a flat in London because his dream of having a house in Cyprus didn’t happen. He said they then resold the house that he paid for and beat him up twice. Despite being found guilty of assault, the developers never went to prison.

“But the worst thing is that not only did he suffer all these things and the wrongdoers never went to prison, they were also awarded by our justice system a huge reward of €60,000 because my client dared to complain about what our court decided he was right to complain about.”

Georgiades said the next step was to take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights, saying there were more than enough grounds to do so.

O’Dwyer called the verdict “a blatant miscarriage of justice.”

“The highest court in Cyprus should have thrown the book at what is a dangerous, criminal and infamous property developer, but it didn’t,” he said. “It’s taken us 14 years to exhaust the due process in Cyprus but they haven’t exhausted us. We will now have to take Cyprus to the European Court of Human Rights.

The Briton said this was just another court ruling designed to have a chilling effect on property victims and foreigners on the island. “Today, the highest civil court ruled that selling the same house twice is not only legal, it’s also a profitable venture. There’s no deterrent to stop any other developer from doing the same to another buyer,” he added.

O’Dwyer questioned whether the judges had examined all the evidence provided in just 16 days, the time span between the first hearing into the appeal, and the issuance of the verdict. The appeal alone has taken nearly eight years to be heard at all, having been filed in 2012.

“I will never stop telling how they kept our money and sold the same house twice. I will never stop telling how they assaulted me twice, put me in hospital and got away with it all. And I will never stop telling how the entire justice system, from the policemen in the streets to the supreme court judges, have abused my rights,” said O’Dwyer.

“The last 14 years of my life have been for nothing, even worse than nothing. The judiciary has done more damage than the developers. It has been hell.”

On the other side, the Karayiannas brothers’ lawyer Andrianna Klaedes praised the judges’ decision regarding the defamation appeal filed by O’Dwyer.

“All grounds of appeal were dismissed by the supreme court today. The blog in which O’Dwyer published his defamatory claims was established long before the matter was taken to court. The defamation which O’Dwyer has been found guilty of has been going on for many years, hence the decision of imposing such a high fine for his actions.”

Klaedes said O’Dwyer never compiled with the court ruling that ordered him to remove the offending website, nor did he ever apologise for defaming her client’s name and destroying the company’s reputation.

She rejected the claims that the court could not have examined all the evidence they were presented with in just the short time frame between the appeal and the verdict.

“That is simply not true,” she said. “The judges have been examining the evidence in their possession long before the appeal and to say the opposite is simply untrue.”

Called to comment on O’Dwyer’s decision to take the matter to the ECHR, Klaedes said her clients were legally on sound footing and not concerned. “We won the case in Cyprus and we will win it again at the European Court of Human Rights,” she said.

Marios Karayiannas, one of the developers, also broke his silence on Friday after the verdict was issued and said he was “extremely grateful the whole matter is now over.”

“The name of my company has finally been restored. I want to make clear that these 14 long years of legal battles cost me an enormous amount of business, which I will never get back,” he said. “This case damaged me financially and I am glad that thanks to today’s verdict I can finally clear my name.”

Karayiannas echoed his lawyer’s comments on O’Dwyer’s decision to take the case to the ECHR, saying: “He can take the matter wherever he wants. He lost once, he will lose again.”

By Jonathan Shkurko | Cyprus Mail | February 21, 2020

See the original article on the Cyprus Mail for comments from the expat community.

Conor O’Dwyer loses Supreme Court appeal

JUST 16 working days after the Supreme Court heard British man Conor O’Dwyer’s appeal against the 2012 ruling of the case filed by property development company Christoforos Karayiannas and Son Ltd in 2006, he was in Court this morning to hear from the judge that his appeal had been rejected.

Given the complexity of the case and the volume of evidence to be reviewed, which dates back over more than a decade, it was considered that it would take the judge much longer to arrive at a decision. The judicial system in Cyprus is notoriously slow.

During this morning’s brief court hearing the judge delivered the verdict and handed the 35-page judgement to Mr O’Dwyer’s lawyer; the full judgement was not read to those present in court.

Mr O’Dwyer will continue his fight for justice and plans to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

I spoke with Mr O’Dwyer’s lawyer, Yiannos Georgiades, for his thoughts on the ruling of the Supreme Court. He said that he was very disappointed with the handling of the case; he believes there are grounds for proceeding with the ECHR for the infringements of Conor’s right to a fair trial and his right to freedom of speech. (These rights are guaranteed by Article 6 and Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.)

The people who are clearly in the wrong have been rewarded for their wrong-doings. They were convicted of assault (twice) but haven’t gone to prison, despite selling his house unlawfully they’ve been allowed to keep Conor’s money. But the court failed to compensate Conor the full amount because they awarded the other side damages of €60,000 by penalising him for defamation because he dared to call the wrong-doers ‘liars’ and ‘crooks’ on his website.

It’s appalling. It’s as if they were rewarding the wrong-doers!

Mr Georgiades explained the ECHR has ruled that consumers should be free to express their opinion and complain about the way they’ve been treated by a company, even if they use strong and insulting words. The right to protect one’s reputation gives way to one’s right to free of speech as it’s in the public interest for an individual to freely express their opinion about the way they’ve been treated.

What message is this giving to people who come to our country to buy property or invest? If they’re unlucky enough to have a dispute, it will drag on for 14 years – and if they dare to complain about what’s happened to them, they will run the risk of being penalised and end up paying a fortune to the people who wronged them!

By Nigel Howarth | Cyprus Property News | February 21, 2020

See the original article on the Cyprus Property News for comments from the expat community.

The long road to justice

Conor O’Dwyer is nothing if not tenacious. The British man has fought a 15-year battle with Cyprus’ justice system

“Unfortunately, I don’t think I will ever be able to live in Cyprus, not after what’s happened to me,” Conor O’Dwyer told the Sunday Mail this week.

“It breaks my heart because this country was the one where me and my family chose to build the house of our dreams. How can I see a future here after what I had to go through?”

It is a sad but completely legitimate question posed by the British man who bought a property in the Famagusta district back in 2005. The dream ended in a bitter legal dispute when the developer resold his house to another British family at a higher price.

Into the mix came two assault cases brought against the developers when O’Dwyer fought his corner, insisting the house was his. The ensuing legal battles brought O’Dwyer face to face with Cyprus’ justice system whose wheels grind notoriously slowly. According to O’Dwyer, it is also stacked against foreigners.

Fifteen years after the fight for his house began, O’Dwyer this week appeared before the supreme court in Nicosia, which was finally hearing his appeal into the 2012 verdict of the case filed by developer company Christoforos Karayiannas and Son Ltd, who accused him of breach of contract and of defamation, after O’Dwyer called them “liars” on his blog, called “Beyond Contempt”.

“Before buying the house in 2005, my wife and I were doing really well in life,” O’Dwyer said.

“Cyprus has always been my and my family’s holiday destination, we came to the island many times and I even served time in the military here,”

Cyprus had joined the EU in 2004 and this, combined with the property boom at the time, persuaded the family to buy a house here.

“It was a great opportunity for us. Even if things weren’t going to work out, we could always sell it at a terrific price, considering the property boom at that time,” O’Dwyer says.

“We were cash buyers, we would have lived here with no mortgage and, according to the contract we signed at the time, I would have had my title deeds within three years. It was the ideal situation. I had no doubts that buying a house in a EU country would present no challenges.”

However, shortly after depositing the contract for the house at the land registry, O’Dwyer started to disagree with the developers over some alleged changes they had made to the plans, some of which he claimed breached the contract and others were misrepresentations at the point of sale.

At this stage, the property was midway through construction and he had already paid €113,000 to the developers.

That’s when O’Dwyer decided to start a blog and tell the story behind the problems he was facing. Within a week of starting the blog, he claims he was assaulted for the first time and decided to close it down.

“It was crazy, I never expected such a thing to happen. The website stayed down for a whole year after the incident.”

He pressed charges for the assault.

In February 2007, O’Dwyer then discovered that his house had been sold at a higher price to another British woman, who had already taken up residence in the now-completed house, despite his contract still in the land registry.

The higher price was reflective of the property boom at the time but his money was never returned.

O’Dwyer decided to re-open his blog, which triggered another serious incident in 2008.

“I was assaulted for the second time, and it was even worse than the first time. I had returned to Cyprus in January 2008 for meetings and to take photos of my house for the civil action.

“Christoforos Karayiannas and his son were alerted to my presence in the village and at the busy junction and in front of dozens of witnesses rammed my car and together with an employee, the three men assaulted me again.”

O’Dwyer was hospitalised for five days and pressed charges again.

After returning to the UK, in August 2008 O’Dwyer decided to camp outside the Cyprus High Commission in London for two months. Thus began his one-man battle to highlight what he came to believe were the perils awaiting foreigners buying property in Cyprus.

“I did that for two reasons. I wanted to get attention after I was assaulted for the second time and I wanted to warn people interested in buying property in Cyprus of the potential risks they might have faced.”

O’Dwyer eventually ended his protest in October 2008 on the promise that his court case would be heard in January 2009.

The developers walked free for the first assault after the prosecutor failed to call O’Dwyer to court and the case was discontinued in his absence.

The developers and their employee were then found guilty for the second assault, but were given a suspended sentence, after a two-year court battle.

The developers then sued O’Dwyer for breach of contract and defamation for what he had written on his blog.

O’Dwyer and his lawyers made a counterclaim for breach of contract.

In 2012, the Larnaca district court ruled that O’Dwyer had not breached any contract and that Karayiannas had unlawfully cancelled it and retained his money. It was also ruled that the house was sold again without his knowledge. However, the court failed to award him any damages.

Instead the court went on to fine O’Dwyer a national record for defamation of €50,000.

“I made 64 flights back and forth from UK to Cyprus to attend lower courts, an absurdity! I spent an absolute fortune. On top of that, it took two years to process my second assault case.”

O’Dwyer said there are striking similarities in the way his case was handled with false rape claim trial of the British woman in Ayia Napa at the end of 2019 which has received such criticism in the British press.

“Firstly, the length of both trials was excruciating. Neither of the two cases needed that much time to be processed, it’s unacceptable.

“Secondly, I can see that in both cases there was a clear victimisation of foreigners, I think it’s a sadly common practice in Cyprus.

“I was the victim of a crime and, somehow, I ended up having to appeal to the supreme court and defend myself. At the same time, the people who assaulted me were found guilty, but were both handed suspended sentences. How is this justice?”

O’Dwyer’s lawyer Yiannos Georgiades claims his client’s case could eventually prove to be useful for the Cypriot justice system.

“I am firmly convinced Conor is doing a favour to our country,” he told the Sunday Mail.

“It motivates us to stand up to those people who give a bad name to our country. It makes us fight for what’s right.

“Conor came here to pursue his dreams, because he loves this country. He did not come here to fight. It’s not him who is making Cyprus look bad.

“Every person who comes here should be treated with respect and have the utmost trust in our justice system. We have the right to protect those who come and invest in our country, just like Conor was planning to do.”

So does O’Dwyer feel he will finally receive justice at the supreme court?

“I hope that they will rule in a way that will allow me to close this horrible chapter of my life. If not, I am fully prepared to take the matter to the European Court of Human Rights.”

He insisted his battle is not just for the benefit of foreigners.

“I want to make things better for everyone in Cyprus, a country that I love, but where, unfortunately, I will never be able to live.”

By Jonathan Shkurko | Cyprus Mail | January 26, 2020

See the original article on the Cyprus Mail with comments from the ex-pat community

Supreme court hears British man’s appeal in lengthy property dispute

Conor O’Dwyer, a British man who has been involved in a lengthy and exhausting court battle over a property he bought in the Famagusta district in 2005, presented his appeal to the supreme court in Nicosia on Friday morning.

O’Dwyer appealed the case filed by developer company Christoforos Karayiannas and Son Ltd, who accused him of breach of contract and of defamation.

The appeal alone has taken nearly eight years to be heard, having been filed in 2012.

According to O’Dwyer, after having already paid €113,000 for the property, the developer decided to sell his house to another British family at a higher price.

O’Dwyer claimed not only was the original sale to him registered with the land registry department, but the developer also kept the money he had paid.

O'Dwyer claimed he was also assaulted by the two directors of the company in 2006 and in 2008 and pressed charges.

Christoforos and Marios Karayiannas walked free for the first assault after the prosecutor failed to call O’Dwyer to court and the case was discontinued in his absence. The former attorney-general Petros Clerides refused to refile the case.

The developers and their employee were then found guilty for the second assault, but were given a suspended sentence, after a two-year court battle.

The developers then sued O’Dwyer for breach of contract and defamation after he published his story on his blog and called the developers “liars”.

O’Dwyer and his lawyers made a counterclaim for breach of contract.

The judge at Larnaca district court ruled that O’Dwyer had not breached any contract and that Karayiannas had unlawfully cancelled it and retained his money. It was also ruled that the house was sold again without his knowledge. However, the court failed to award him any damages.

In addition to that, despite the verdict agreeing that Karayiannas’ breach of contract claim was untrue, the court went on to fine O’Dwyer a national record for defamation of €50,000.

O’Dwyer then launched an appeal in 2102 which was finally heard by the supreme court on Friday. No date has been set for the verdict.

“We will patiently wait for the judges’ verdict, like we did throughout the past years,” O’Dwyer’s lawyer Yiannos Georgiades told the Cyprus Mail after they left the court.

“We have strong grounds for our appeal and we made our voices heard today. Conor deserves justice.”

Georgiades stressed that O’Dwyer’s freedom of speech was not respected when the judge found him guilty of defamation.

After Friday’s hearing, former High Commissioner of Cyprus to the UK Euripides Evriviades also showed his support for O’Dwyer’s by tweeting on his official Twitter profile.

“Good luck Conor,” the tweet said. “(I am) with you in spirit. Hope and pray that all works out. Remember vividly our meeting in London. I have the greatest respect for you and for anyone who relentlessly pursues his or her rights within the law and due process.”

Since 2005 O’Dwyer has become active in various groups advising Britons not to buy properties in Cyprus. In March 2019 he organised a protest outside a major property exhibition in London and warned about purchasing houses on the island.
In November the British government upheld its advice of exercising “extreme caution” when buying a property in Cyprus if the title deeds are not readily available.

Jonathan Shkurko | Cyprus Mail | January 24, 2020

See the original article on the Cyprus Mail for comments from the expat community.

After 15 years, British man hopes property fight is finally over

A tortuous 15-year fight over a dodgy property sale and defamation case may finally be coming to an end this Friday when the supreme court is due to hear a British man’s appeal.

The appeal alone has taken nearly eight years to be heard.

In 2005, Conor O’Dwyer bought a property in the Famagusta district which ended in a bitter legal dispute when the developer resold his house to another British family at a higher price.

He has arrived nearly a week early in anticipation of the case and is protesting outside the supreme court in Nicosia. Pictures O’Dwyer posted on Twitter show he has turned up well prepared with posters, toothpaste and a toothbrush, a tent with placards criticising Cypriot justice and other gear to see him through until Friday.

According to O’Dwyer not only was the original sale to him registered with the land registry department, but the developer also kept the money he had paid.

‘This protest is about legal aid, I have spent a fortune on legal fees, travel expenses and translators etc. and now despite being ‘granted’ EU legal aid (Council directive 2002/8/EC) to continue my fight I have never received any funding. My appeal is on Friday, there is nothing translated. I am here to camp outside to expose this injustice because this is not what legal aid should look like.’ C.O’Dwyer

In 2012 courts ruled in favour of O’Dwyer on the grounds of the resale of his home, but also found him guilty of defamation of the developer and he was fined 60,000 euros.

“What we are fighting against is twofold. First is the issue that O’Dwyer won the case but was not awarded all the damages and legal fees he should have got,” his lawyer Giannos Georgiades told the Cyprus Mail on Monday. “And also that his freedom of speech was not respected when the judge found him guilty of defamation.”

Georgiades also says that O’Dwyer is a family man who was dragged into a drawn-out legal battle and went up against property developers at the height of their powers during the building boom of the early 2000s.

In November the British government upheld its advice of exercising “extreme caution” when buying a property if the title deeds are not readily available.

People buying property in Cyprus in some cases have become “trapped buyers”.

The British High Commission’s advice page still warns that developers take out mortgages on land or property and that signing a contract under these conditions makes the buyer ultimately liable for the loan.

Lawyers are not required to check for mortgages automatically.

While a law in 2015 attempted to solve the incredibly complex issue, as of 2018 there were still as many as 70,000 trapped property buyers without title deeds.

However, member of the House interior committee Andreas Kyprianou told the Cyprus Mail last month that “the 2015 law is working very well and many people have had their title deeds restored, the bill is being enforced.”

“The British government has been warning of this issue for a while, and perhaps there are some people with outstanding issues – but to my knowledge the bill is working well,” Kyprianou concluded.

By Nick Theodoulou | Cyprus Mail | January 21, 2020

See the original article on the Cyprus Mail for comments from the ex-pat community.

Our View: The AG and the complete inversion of all logic

ON SUNDAY a Greek newspaper carried a report that Attorney-general Petros Clerides had suspended prosecution for driving offences against his son.

Clerides, declined to comment until Monday night on a television current affairs show where although he was not specific about the reported offences – drink driving and not having an MOT – he did confirm that an offence had taken place and that he had suspended prosecution.

Article 113 of the constitution grants the Attorney-general or members of his office acting on his instructions the right to suspend any prosecution against anyone in Cyprus “exercisable at (the AG’s) discretion in the public interest”.

While no one is saying the AG acted illegally, his reasoning is however flawed.

He suggests the fact that he did not sweep the whole affair under the carpet showed transparency. He suggests the fact that he has suspended such prosecutions for other people’s children means his own son should be treated no differently. He suggests it was no big deal because the particular offence is now regulated by an on-the-spot fine and is not really an offence at all.

This is a complete inversion of all logic and a brazen example of Orwellian doublespeak.

Whether he did it above board or under the carpet, he has sent the message that some people are above the law. His, son, a lawyer was 32 years old at the time, not errant teenager who didn’t know any better and might deserve a second chance. And how was quashing such a prosecution in the public interest anyway?

If a driving offence punishable by an on-the-spot fine is not really an offence at all, why is it written in the law and why is there a fine?

If there were, as the AG said, no serious consequences on his son’s career from the driving offence, why not just pay the fine? It’s not like he could not afford it. Even if there were extenuating circumstances that we are not aware of that caused his son to commit a driving offence, the fine could have and should have been paid since it was all ‘no big deal’ anyway.

The AG says he is not ashamed of his actions and merely wanted to treat his son the same way he has treated other people’s children. Does that mean he suspends more driving prosecutions than not? If the majority are fined, then his son, by his own reasoning, should actually have been fined if he wanted to treat him like most others.

The whole point of punishing those who break the law is that they won’t offend again or worse still, harm someone by their repeated actions.

If the highest lawyer in the land can dismiss the letter of the law with a wave of his pen, there is not much hope for this country. It’s the AG’s job to lead by example but the only example that has been shown here is that the law is not worth the paper it’s written on, if you know the right people that is.

Brit wins property dispute but must pay for defamation

A BRITISH homebuyer has said he will appeal a court order to pay compensation for an online campaign against a property developer whom the court has found guilty of the unlawful termination of a 2005 contract.

After years of battling his case, and finally having the court acknowledge that his developers had unlawfully terminated his contract, the Famagusta District Court has asked Conor O’Dwyer to pay compensation to Paralimni-based Karayannas Developers over his online campaign.

Although the court awarded O’Dwyer €141,000 in compensation, which comes to around €200,000 with interest, he has been asked to compensate the developers to the tune of some €60,000 – over €85,000 with interest – for defamation on the website lyingbuilder.com, set up in March 2006 against the backdrop of a growing dispute with the developers.

“I’m being penalised because I dared express my opinion about how I was treated by the developers,” O’Dwyer said.

The website documented O’Dwyer’s interaction with the developers by scanning documents, recording conversations and posting photographs of the disputed villa.

O’Dwyer’s lawyer, Yiannos Georgiades, has been instructed to appeal the court’s decision.

In the case of defamation, Georgiades said that European law precedents weighed heavily towards the protection of freedom of speech and people’s right to express their opinion, even against major corporations.

Georgiades said they will also appeal the court’s decision not to award damages for expenses (travelling to and from the UK), loss of rent (by selling a home in the UK to settle in Cyprus) and damages for distress caused by the developers.

The O’Dwyer family sold their house to move to Cyprus with their two small children, buying property on land belonging to the developers in 2005.

They felt their agreement with the developer was breached but negotiations to find a mutually agreed solution failed.

O’Dwyer had already paid over €100,000 in instalments as per his contract and claims the house was resold without his knowledge in May 2007. His contract had been unlawfully terminated and his money never returned.

Karayannas and his son have already been found guilty twice of assault on O’Dwyer in 2006 and 2008. Concerning the second assault, the state has appealed the court’s decision to give a 12-month suspended sentence for actual bodily harm on the grounds the offence should have related to the more serious grievous bodily harm.

O’Dwyer is also waiting on a civil suit against the developers in relation to the second assault that left him six days in hospital.

Also pending is a Supreme Court appeal to a court’s decision to clear Karayannas of any wrongdoing, in relation to a private criminal prosecution.

By: Poly Pantelides Published: Saturday 15th September 2012

O’Dwyer aid marks a Cyprus legal first

BRITISH home buyer Conor O’Dwyer has been granted legal aid to continue his long-running civil case against the Paralimni-based property developer Christoforos Karayiannas & Son Ltd over a disputed property.

In a short hearing yesterday morning, Judge Tefkros Economou at Famagusta District Court said the aid was necessary, pointing to EU directive 2002/8/EC which deals with cross border disputes within the EU.

Supreme Court Judge Tefkros Economou. Τεύκρος Οικονόμου.

The EU directive was passed into Cyprus law in 2005 and has only ever been used in human rights and criminal cases, making O’Dwyer’s claim in a civil action a legal first.

O’Dwyer has been embroiled in an expensive and lengthy legal action with Paralimni based Karayiannas Developers, with several concurrent cases running in court.

The aid will help with his fees in case in which O’Dwyer claims unlawful termination of his contract of sale by Karayiannas (Case 365/2006). The aid will also pay for a court interpreter, accommodation costs and travel expenses between his home in Britain and court dates in Cyprus.

“Conor has been drained financially due to all the cases pending in the courts in Cyprus for all these years,” lawyer Yiannos Georgiaides, acting for O’Dwyer, told the Cyprus Mail yesterday.

“It came to the, point where he could not afford his legal fees; therefore he would not have had proper access to justice. He would have been in a very difficult position.”

Wrangling

O’Dwyer’s lawyers applied for aid after years of legal wrangling over a disputed villa in Frenaros, which began when O’Dwyer claimed he purchased a house that was then resold by Karayiannas Developers without his knowledge.

The dispute has taken a series of twists and turns, including O’Dwyer staging demonstrations outside the Cyprus High Commission in London, sleeping at the gates of the Presidential Palace in Nicosia and publishing his entire story online and on the video site YouTube.

He claims the spat resulted in him losing the house and £100,000 he had paid for the property.

The developers dismissed the accusations and accused O’Dwyer of attempting to extort a more expensive house from them – a charge that O’Dwyer flatly denies.

The case has been closely followed by expatriate communities on the island, where as many as 30,000 Britons are now thought to own property.

“If Conor was not granted this legal aid, this would be equal to the refusal of his right to justice,” Georgiaides added.

Last year the developer, his son and an associate were convicted of assault and actual body harm of O’Dwyer after he was beaten up outside the disputed house in early 2007.

O’Dwyer spent a week in Larnaca General Hospital after the attack and said the incident blighted his family life.

By: Nathan Morley
Published: Friday 23rd December 2011

Cyprus buyers stage protest at overseas property show

A group of British property buyers who believe they have been defrauded or mis-sold property in Cyprus staged a protest outside the ‘A Place in the Sun Live’ overseas property exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham.

VISITORS to the ‘A Place in the Sun Live’ exhibition at Birmingham’s NEC were greeted by a group of protesters who were raising awareness and distributing leaflets on the potential problems associated with buying property on the island of Cyprus.

Many of the protesters believe they have been defrauded or mis-sold property and are taking advice from their lawyers on possible legal remedies.

Some of the exhibitors complained that the protesters were damaging their business and demanded that they be removed, but the police turned them away and made sure there were no problems.

‘A Place in the Sun Live’ claims to be “the UK’s biggest and best-attended overseas property exhibition” and is organised in conjunction with the popular Channel Four television programme, which attracts millions of viewers each week. The exhibition, which ended on Sunday, attracted 4,076 visitors.

By: Nigel Howarth Tuesday 4th October 2011
To read comments on this article from expats in Cyprus see the Cyprus Property News