23 April 2015
Head of the Parliamentary Merit Committee, Demetris Syllouris MP, went on Sigma TV in the evening of 21 April to speak about the cancellation of the Parliamentary group’s hearings into actions taken against FBME Bank and its branch in Cyprus by the Central Bank of Cyprus and its Resolution Committee.
22 April 2015
A failure of key government officials to attend caused for the third time the Cyprus Parliamentary hearings into what has become known as the ‘FBME affair’ to be cancelled. The hearings have been called by MPs who sit on the Parliamentary Merit Committee which oversees the actions of State officials and civil servants, and the stated aim has been to investigate the actions taken against FBME Bank and its Cyprus branch by the Central Bank of Cyprus.
21 April 2015
The Administrator of the Cyprus Branch of FBME, Dinos Christofides, left the Cyprus branch of FBME Bank at 2pm yesterday, Monday 20 April, saying he will not return until Monday next week, 27 April. In time-honoured fashion, he managed not to warn anyone before he walked out, leaving the Bank’s efforts to meet payments to its depositors to grind, once more, to an undignified halt!
17 April 2015
The third date for the Parliamentary Ethics Committee’s hearing into the action taken against FBME Bank’s Cyprus branch is next Tuesday, 21 April. A brief confirmation of the agenda is on the Parliament’s website at http://www.parliament.cy/easyconsole.cfm/id/326.
The website says the Committee will investigate “actions of the Government that could harm the public interest” in relation to FBME.
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
Much has been revealed in the last couple of weeks that we didn’t know before thanks to flurries in the media, resignations from the Central Bank and the outcomes of official investigations. For the first time in a real sense, light has been shed on the circumstances of last July’s draconian imposition of Resolution measures on FBME bank’s Cyprus branch and the string of consequences of that decision.
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.
