EARLIER today a group of around a hundred members of the Leptos Buyers Action Group (LBAG) and their supporters held a peaceful demonstration and march along a busy Paphos seafront demanding their Title Deeds.
Most of the protesters I spoke to said that they had been waiting for their Title Deeds for many years. Many said they were outraged by the closure of the Cyprus Property Action Group website following a writ against Denis O’Hare, the website’s owner.
Some told me that the Land Registry had carried out Title searches on their behalf. These show that the land on which their properties is built had been mortgaged to the bank by the developer prior to them buying – and in some cases those mortgages amounted to many millions of Euros.
Many of the demonstrators felt intimidated and refused to give me their names out of fear of reprisals being taken against them. But Tricia Sabey, a LBAG co-ordinator, who has her Title Deeds told me she had nothing to lose by speaking up.
I asked Mrs Sabey what the protest was trying to achieve. “We wanted to let people know that there are €5 billion of toxic debt owed by the developers to the Cyprus banks. We believe that the Cyprus property market is heading for a crash; just like the US sub-prime market”.
Mrs Sabey told me: “I thought the protest went very well. We achieved our aims and it was a peaceful demonstration. We wanted to reach the wider public in Cyprus, not just British expats. We wanted to reach the Cypriot market, the German market and the Russian market – and we got our message across to a wide spectrum of people here in Paphos today.”