23 October 2014
Legal arguments concluded yesterday, 22 October, in the District Court in the hearing of the interim application by the shareholders of FBME Bank Limited to freeze any action by the Central Bank of Cyprus to sell the FBME branch. The Court has reserved its judgment for a future date.
22 October 2014
FBME Limited has renewed its commitment to fight all efforts by the Central Bank of Cyprus to expropriate and sell the Cyprus branch of its Bank.
The holding company issued a statement following the first day (21 October) of the scheduled hearing of its interim application by the District Court of Nicosia to disallow a sale of its branch. The hearing continues.
20 October 2014
The Cyprus branch of FBME Bank reopened this morning on the return to the office of the branch Administrator, appointed by the Central Bank of Cyprus. As we reported, the branch was prevented from conducting business during the course of last week on the instructions of the Administrator while he went on leave.
14 October 2014
FBME’s submission, based on the exhaustive investigation into its operations, has been delivered to the US Department of the Treasury’s FinCEN bureau. We understand it is now being read and considered. A copy of the Public Comment which accompanied this is available for download here.
13 October 2014
Dinos Christofides, the Administrator of the Cyprus branch of FBME Bank, appointed by the Cyprus Central Bank under its inappropriate Resolution Decree, will be away from 13 to 20 October 2014, and has left instructions that no cheques are to be issued during this time. In other words, he hasn’t appointed a deputy to do his self-appointed task of approving each and every payment. Presumably, his abnormal service will resume on 20 October.
10 October 2014
Thousands of computers all over the world are accessing the fbmeltd.com website, as shown by the latest statistics of use. A large number of people in North America in particular are finding the site and returning regularly for updates. Many others in the EU and CIS are also avid followers, as well as thousands in Cyprus. In total, since the site was launched in early August there have been 425,000 individual hits on the site from 79 countries.
7 October 2014
Whether the Central Bank of Cyprus ever understood the consequences of its decision in slapping Resolution measures on the Cyprus branch of FBME Bank in the late evening of 21 July, they realise the damage to Cyprus that they have now caused. The latest to express their extreme disquiet about the banking authorities in the Republic are members of the Upper House of the Russian Parliament.
30 September 2014
On 29 September, the District Court of Nicosia has fixed the Interim Application filed by the shareholders of FBME Bank Limited for hearing on 21 October 2014.
23 September 2014
The submission to the US Department of the Treasury’s FinCEN bureau in Washington DC is underway. This is in line with the 60-day period allowed for a response to FinCEN’s notice of finding and notice of proposed rulemaking issued in July.
18 September 2014
On 17 July, FinCEN announced a Notice of Findings and a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking against FBME Bank. The notices allow for public comments to be submitted to FinCEN by 22 September. The international law firm Hogan Lovells was instructed to engage with FinCEN and they in turn retained anti money laundering (AML) experts at Ernst and Young to carry out a thorough and independent investigation of FBME Bank and its policies and procedures, especially with regard to AML policies, procedures and practices in line with EU regulations, and specifically the latest Central Bank of Cyprus Fourth AML Directive.
