In Cyprus “telling the truth is a far greater crime than stealing pensioners’ savings”

In Cyprus "telling the truth is a far greater crime than stealing pensioners' savings"Justice is blind and allegedly even-handed.  The price of proving your innocence seems pretty steep in the TRNC. I suppose Pauline Read’s mistake is being  allegedly innocent. If she were  guilty, would she be treated the same?

If what I have seen and read of fraud not being a crime in the TRNC, then if Ms Read were guilty, wouldn’t she be in good company.  I suppose telling the truth is a far greater crime than stealing pensioners’ savings. Indeed all Ms Read needs to do is proclaim publicly that everything the Bank has done is fine and she sees that it is within the law and all the victims, who are not victims really, should be glad to give up their villas to a Bank that has only ever acted honourably and stuck to the letter of the law.  So what if they charged rates of interest that would make some of us blanche a little? So what if they were a little impatient and broke into two of the villas and changed the locks without a court order?  The borrowers knew the rate and were happy with it, the Bank knew the rate and were more than happy that their borrowers could and would  make the repayments.

Here endeth my story from fantasy-land.   The fact is that thousands of innocents abroad are being taken to the cleaners. Their money taken, their dreams exploded and their lives decimated. Now here comes the rub. Try for justice and it will cost you. In order to get justice, you have to use whatever ‘rainy day’ money you have left in order to pay the same Advocates who got you into the mess in the first place.  It would appear that a legal system set up, they thought, to protect them is not satisfied with allowing them to lose their savings they have amassed over a lifetime of working, they now want a second or third dip into the pockets of these now impoverished people.

If I am reading it correctly, Pauline Read did just that, achieved a victory, which turned out to be a mirage. She joined the rest of the victims of K5 on a long and arduous journey towards justice.  A journey that seems destined to end in the European Court of Human Rights.  So why didn’t she just ‘keep stum’ and let this process take its course.   Probably because it does not appear to be in her nature to take things lying down, and even more probably she doesn’t expect to live long enough to receive justice.

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