Category: Press Archive

THE CRASH of the stock market, in which thousands lost their life savings or ended up with huge debts that they are still paying off today, ensured that very few people would ever again view the Cyprus Stock Exchange as a trustworthy institution. The CSE authorities may have introduced tighter controls and tougher regulations after the fiasco but, 10 years on, investing in the shares of companies listed on the exchange is still considered risky activity by the majority of people.

Once the damage is done, it is very difficult to change people’s perceptions, more so when the authorities fail to take punitive action against the culprits, professionals who knowingly misled investors with cooked accounts and unrealistic forecasts. The overriding impression created was that the law offered no effective protection to investors from dishonest businessmen looking to make a fast buck at the expense of gullible people.

This same mistake has now been made in the property market, which also went through a ‘bubble phase’, attracting all sorts of cowboys, posing as developers, who saw an opportunity to make a quick profit. Most of the buyers were foreigners and therefore easy prey as they were not aware of the Cyprus laws and were not guaranteed reliable legal advice.

The results are well-known and far from flattering for Cyprus. One couple recently lost their flat, some buyers were sold properties that had already been sold, others ended up in flats without electricity and there are close to 10,000 foreigner property-owners without title deeds, praying that the developer would not go bankrupt and the bank takes over their property. There has been one positive case in which owners sued a lawyer who had misled them and were paid damages in the region of €100,000.

This mess has received extensive media coverage abroad, particularly in Britain from which most buyers of holiday homes came. British MEPs have raised the issue of title deeds at the European Parliament, thus making the problem known across Europe. It was the worst possible publicity the struggling holiday home market could have received as it amplified the effects of the recession and jeopardised the future of many developers.

Given that government proposals on the title deeds issue, which also affects some 90,000 Cypriots, will solve none of the old problems, there was only one way for Cyprus to re-build its tarnished image – taking a tough line in cases of developers deceiving buyers that were brought before justice. It was critically important to show that the law offered protection to foreigners who had been deceived by locals; the case of the lawyer who had to pay damages to his clients was a step in the right direction.

But in the last week this good work has been undone by the case of Connor O’Dwyer who had been assaulted by three men (a developer he was in dispute with, the developer’s son and an associate) and was hospitalised for a week. His three attackers were found guilty of causing actual bodily harm by the court but the judge did not give a custodial sentence. Father and son were given a 10-month suspended prison sentence while the third man was fined €3,000. The developer had also crashed his car into O’Dwyer’s but for that misdemeanour the court gave him two penalty points, instead of three that would have caused him to lose his licence.

The court’s leniency towards O’Dwyer’s attackers was quite astonishing and will not boost the confidence of foreigners in our justice system. It is more likely to encourage the view, rightly or wrongly, that the courts are not very tough on crimes by Cypriots against foreigners. To add insult to injury, O’Dwyer now faces criminal charges for posting offensive and harassing messages “without reasonable cause”, for publishing personal data and for threatening violence.

The Attorney-general may have been obliged to charge O’Dwyer after the police received a complaint, but it seems bizarre that the state would prosecute for alleged offences committed six years ago. On Friday it was reported that the Attorney-general would lodge an appeal against the court’s decision and lenient sentence in the O’Dwyer case. One prosecutor told the Cyprus Mail: The Attorney-general’s position is that nothing changes because he is British or any other nationality. Justice is for all.”

The authorities may have finally realised the damage being done to Cyprus’ image by our system’s failure to protect property buyers, but unfortunately, this seems like a case of too little too late.

November 7, 2010

THE Attorney-general will appeal a court decision and the sentence handed down in the assault of a British national by a developer following a dispute over a property.

On Wednesday, a Paralimni court sentenced property developers, Christoforos Karayiannas, 55 and his son Marios, 35, to a 10-month jail term that was however suspended for two years for assaulting Conor O’Dwyer in 2008.

A third man involved in the incident, 31-year-old Charalambos Ttigis was fined €3,000.

The court found the trio guilty last month of assaulting O’Dwyer and causing actual bodily harm (ABH) – and not the more serious grievous bodily harm (GBH) count, the state had charged them with.

State prosecutor Thanasis Papanicolaou told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that the state will appeal. “I have been authorised by the Attorney-general to file an appeal for both the decision and the sentence,” Papanicolaou said. He added that this would be done in the next few days.

Papanicolaou stressed, that the fact that the plaintiff was British did not make any difference to the state.

“Every person has rights in the Republic of Cyprus, whether they are Cypriots, foreigners, EU nationals or third country nationals,” he said. “The Attorney- general’s position is that nothing changes because he is British or any other nationality. Justice is for all.”

The GBH charge carries a maximum of seven years in jail while ABH goes up to three years.

In her decision on October 27, Judge Evi Antoniou said O’Dwyer – when he testified during the trial – was “excessive in most points.”

“He was stressed, lost his temper, and through his testimony it became evident that the only thing he wanted was the punishment of the defendants,” the judge said. “This led him to numerous contradictions in his testimony.”

During sentencing, the judge said she accepted the position that Christoforos and Marios Karayiannas had been repeatedly provoked by the plaintiff. “Recording most of the conversations the plaintiff had with defendant One without him knowing … publishing the conversations on the Internet, the claims of the plaintiff that defendants One and Two are liars and they mislead people, and publishing these claims as well as harassing” the defendants’ clients “cannot be ignored,” the judge said.

“The plaintiff’s behaviour cannot be isolated from the way things went. He activated four spy cameras; one being a micro- camera hidden well in his jacket to peacefully measure, according to his claim, the pavement of the house he bought and to take pictures,” the judge said.

That provocation was taken into consideration when deciding whether to suspend the sentence, the judge said. It is believed that this particular point will be disputed by the prosecution in the appeal.

The legal precedent cited by the judge stated that provocation can be a mitigating factor in passing sentence but nowhere did it explicitly say that it can be used to suspend a sentence.

By: George Psyllides Published: Friday 5th November 2010

To see comments from British expats read this article in the Cyprus Property News

THE property developers convicted last week of assaulting a British expat escaped jail yesterday after the presiding judge handed down a 10 month suspended prison sentence for two of them and issued the third a €3,000 fine.

Christoforos Karayiannas, 55, and his son Marios Karayiannas, 35, received the jail sentences suspended for two years while their associate Charalambous Ttigis, 31, who allegedly pinned down Conor O’Dwyer during the assault in 2007, received a €3,000 fine.

They were found guilty of actual bodily harm (ABH) against O’Dwyer, who said yesterday “I am absolutely shocked and disgusted. This trial was 100 per cent worse than the assault. It seems that in two years of hearings the judge has lost sight of who the victim was.”

O’Dwyer’s lawyer in two other cases that he has against the Karayiannas’, Yiannos Georgiades, also expressed his surprise at yesterday’s decision. He told the Cyprus Mail “I’m quite shocked. In other cases… where three men have assaulted one vulnerable man… the assaulter has ended up in prison.”

He also questioned the judge’s decision to reduce the conviction from grievous bodily harm (GBH) to ABH, and from a custodial to a suspended sentence.

The sentences follow an equally lenient sentence handed down to Christoforos Karayiannas for crashing into O’Dwyer’s car during the incident in 2007. He received a mere two penalty points on his driving licence. Had he been given three he would have lost his licence.

During the trial, the court heard how the men rammed O’Dwyer’s rental car at a busy junction in the eastern village of Frenaros, he was then subjected to a savage beating, including having his head stamped on – the attack left him in hospital for a week.

The controversy between the two parties began five years ago when O’Dwyer claimed he purchased a house in Frenaros that was then resold without his knowledge by the developers.

An emotional O’Dwyer said he was in a state of shock at hearing the result, having spent years protesting and campaigning to have his case heard. “So far all I have gained is two points on (Karayiannas’) licence and a suspended sentence”.

The civil case against the Karayiannas’, which will examine a dispute over the termination of the contract between the O’Dwyer and the developers, is due to begin on Friday.

A second private criminal prosecution case is already underway, for the alleged double sale of O’Dwyer’s house. At the same time, Georgiades said, the Attorney General is also bringing a case against O’Dwyer for the content of his website.

By: Patrick Dewhurst
Published: November 4th, 2010
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