FAMAGUSTA Developers and its director Kypros Kyprianou have been found guilty in a fraud case involving the double-selling of a maisonette near Paralimni lake.
The trial lasted some eight months and included testimony from 15 witnesses after Kypros Kyprianou entered a plea of not guilty. The offence took place between 2006 and 2010 and it was reported that Kyprianou made a profit of €85,000.
Kyprianou was remanded in jail and a mitigation plea will be heard today (Wednesday). It’s possible that the presiding judge, Evi Antoniou, will also pass sentence today.
Kyprianou and his company, ‘Famagusta Developers’ are facing further criminal cases in the district courts of Larnaca , Famagusta , Nicosia and Limassol, involving similar offenses including forgery and theft by proxy brought by various complainants. We understand that several of these cases have already started.
In August 2010, the police advised the public that the company was under investigation for several cases of alleged fraud. The following month, the company and its director filed a suit against Phileleftheros demanding over €2 million for “written slander and or libel and or damaging lies” for one particular report entitled “Famagusta in Court”. In the same month the Famagusta court awarded a British couple €100,000 in damages for losses incurred through breaches of their contractual agreement with FK & S (Varoshia) Properties Ltd, 40 percent of which was reportedly owned by Famagusta Developers.
The company’s office in Protaras was targeted by bombers twice in less than five months in 2010 and 2011.
In late 2011, an order was issued for the winding up of the company after it was deemed “unable to pay its debts” by the Famagusta District Court.
Kyprianou spent most of the 1990s in prison for fraud offences after his company, Kyprianou Estates, which operated throughout the 1980s, was reported for selling the same property twice.
He fled the island before the police investigation was complete but was arrested in Germany and extradited to Cyprus where he was jailed. He was released in 2000 and later went on to set up Famagusta Developers.