HAIRCUT
THATCHER LEGACY INSIDE
The signs of the bail-in were there. We should have seen it coming
Former British prime minister remains a hate figure for miners
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April 14, 2013
COFFEESHOP: UNIONS PROVIDE A GIGGLE AMID THE TRAGEDY - PAGE 17 INSIDE Cyprus Return to the Cyprus pound no easy option 7
World Frustration as re-trial of Mubarak aborted 9
Education How much will you have to pay to study in the UK? centre
Lifestyle Dark side inspires Nordic film renaissance 20
Sport Last-gasp double rescues Gunners back
Helios orphans haircut victims Orphans stand to lose payouts made after parents’ deaths By Alexia Saoulli
O
N AUGUST 14, 2005, 33 children were orphaned overnight, their lives irrevocably changed. These children are the living victims of the fateful Helios Airways crash that killed all 121 passengers onboard the Boeing 737 aircraft, including their parents and, in many cases, their siblings. On March 16, 2013, the majority of these same children became victims once again. This time, instead of being robbed of their parents, they stand to lose the compensation awarded to them following their parents’ death as part of the brutal haircut on bank deposits. George Nicolaou and his wife are both 60 years old. For the past seven and a half years they have been the sole carers of their nineyear-old grandson, George, who lost both his parents and sister, in the crash. Nicolaou has been unemployed for two years. His wife stopped working when their grandson was born, to help look after him, because the couple’s son and daughter-in-law worked full time. Although the couple don’t have much money, they have managed to get by. They have also felt secure in the knowledge that they had around €1 million in a fixed deposit account with the Bank of Cyprus. “This was the compensation he got for losing his mother and father and sister,” said Nicolaou. The figure is in fact the total sum of money that Nicolaou, his wife, their grandson and other family members all received as compensation for their loss. Instead of keeping their
Vassilis Koutsoftas lost his sister, Chryso, and both parents in the Helios plane crash in 2005 portion of compensation money themselves, however, the grandparents and other family members preferred to give it all to the orphaned boy. Today, given the terms of the bailout, his grandson could lose 60 per cent or more of that money and there was nothing Nicolaou could do to stop it. The bitter irony is that he had tried desperately to keep his grandson’s money out of the clutches of the EU and IMF lenders but was prevented from doing so by red tape. “In the first few weeks of March I wanted to move his money. I felt things weren’t right with the Bank of Cyprus (BoC). I contacted a lawyer and he told me that because the money was in
my grandson’s name I had to file an application with the court to take over the management of the child’s money. He said this process would take at least three months.” Nicolaou said he feared his grandson could also lose the remainder of his money given the present state of affairs at the BoC. “I want to move it to another bank or to split the money up into four accounts. I don’t know what to do. I just know that I need to protect what is left so that when he’s 18 he’ll have at least something to help him have a start in life,” he said. “We have nothing to give him. If something
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Newtown mum makes heart-wrenching plea on US gun laws FRANCINE Wheeler blinked past her tears, looked straight into the camera and asked Americans to push for tougher gun laws, drawing on courage she said comes from the memory of her six-year-old son, Ben, murdered in his first-grade classroom in Newtown, Connecticut. “His boundless energy kept him
running across the soccer field long after the game was over,” said Wheeler, describing her son during what is usually President Barack Obama’s weekly Saturday address to the nation yesterday. “He couldn’t wait to get to school every morning,” she said, her voice breaking, her husband David beside her, sighing and swallowing
hard. The address was the culmination of a week of emotional pleas in Washington from families of the 26 people killed by a gunman at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14. “To us, it feels as if it happened just yesterday,” Wheeler said, recounting the horror of waiting
at the firehouse after the shooting “for the boy who would never come home.” The massacre has spurred Obama to propose new restrictions on guns - politically difficult measures in a country where constitutional rights to own guns are defended by powerful lobby groups like the National Rifle Association.