16 April 2015
On 9 April 2015, FinCEN, the investigative bureau of the US Department of the Treasury, published confirmation of a meeting with Hogan Lovells, the lawyers for FBME Limited in Washington DC.
To see a copy of the announcement and a related comment from FBME click here.
2 April 2015
Senior government officials, including the Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus, failed to attend the scheduled meeting on 31 March of the Cyprus House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee. This meeting was intended to allow Members of Parliament to investigate the causes and consequences of the actions taken by the Central Bank against FBME Bank’s Cyprus branch and the impact of these actions on the public interest in Cyprus. The meeting has been rescheduled for 21 April and once more will be held in camera.
27 March 2015
The new date for the hearing into the handling of the FBME Bank case by the Cyprus House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee will now be on Tuesday 31 March, according to published reports.
26 March 2015
In announcing his resignation from the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Cyprus on Friday, 20 March 2015, Stavros Zenios issued a written public statement in Greek, which he also listed on his blog. This statement in Greek was run in full on the news website Stockwatch, and we have been granted permission to provide a link to its site: http://www.stockwatch.com.cy/nqcontent.cfm?a_name=news_view&ann_id=219817.
We produced an English translation, the link to which is here.
20 March 2015
Stavros Zenios, a non-Executive member of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Cyprus, resigned from the Board this morning, 20 March. He is the second member to step down in recent days; Stelios Kiliaris resigned a week ago citing the impossibility of continuing to serve in the present environment. Mr Kiliaris was also a member of the three-person Resolution Committee who imposed the Resolution Decree on FBME.
20 March 2015
A report has appeared on the news site of leading media outlet, Sigmalive, centred on a letter written by FBME’s external legal counsel and sent to the Republic’s Attorney General. In this, exceptionally strong complaints have been made about Dinos Christofides in regard to his role as Administrator appointed to run the FBME Bank branch, including the accusation that he may have broken the law.
20 March 2015
There is mounting evidence of the difficulties faced by people working for companies restricted to a EUR 200 a day maximum payout from their FBME Cyprus accounts. This EUR 200 level has been in place for corporate as well as individual depositors since the beginning of March in a draconian measure enacted by the Administrator of the Central Bank of Cyprus. It was previously EUR 1,000 a day.
15 March 2015
Information has come to FBME Limited that the Republic of Cyprus at the Arbitral tribunal at the ICC in Paris, are seeking to have the Cyprus branch of FBME Bank closed on the grounds that no buyers for the branch have been found. In other words, because the Resolution measure foisted on the branch by the CBC last July hasn’t worked they want to withdraw the FBME licence. They add that they have to do this now because closure would trigger the deposit protection insurance and that the FBME funds held by the CBC are at a level (EUR 158 million) that will enable them to make these insurance payments.
13 March 2015
Despite facing a sea of troubles of its own making, the Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) is flailing around with more desperate measures to prove it remains a dangerous entity. As the Governor and the CBC’s Executive Directors, one of whom resigned yesterday, face questions in Parliament and the risk of compensatory payouts grows stronger by the day, the CBC is focused only on furthering its own dubious ends.
12 March 2015
Reflections on the handiwork of the Cyprus Resolution Authority and Resolution Committee.
The Resolution Authority and Committee of the Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) are very much in the news at the moment, none of it favourable to them. The latest debacle is the Administration of the defunct Laiki Bank, in which Cyprus account holders suffered huge losses of hundreds of millions of euros. The specific focus is on the Resolution Authority’s highly conflicted legal action against Laiki’s former Chairman, Andreas Vgenopoulos. The Special Administrator appointed to handle the Resolution of Laiki, Andri Antoniades, resigned on Monday 2 March, blaming the Governor of the Central Bank and the Resolution Authority for monkey business linked to the legal case, including the assertion that the Governor’s daughter is on the former Laiki Chairman’s payroll despite earlier promises she would step down.
