Cyprus Mail www.cyprus-mail.com
Thursday, April 4, 2013
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Central Bank faces slew of lawsuits
Spanish princess is charged in corruption probe
Research document marks Tom Cruise’s Irish roots
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IMF chief lauds ‘fair’ Cyprus deal Lagarde says IMF will give €1b over three years to the island’s bailout
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HE INTERNATIONAL Monetary Fund (IMF) will contribute €1 billion over three years to the €10 billion bailout for Cyprus, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said yesterday. Lagarde said she expected the IMF board to approve the funds in early May. “A staff team of the International Monetary Fund has reached staff level agreement with the Cypriot authorities on an economic programme that will be supported by the IMF jointly with the European Union and the European Central Bank,” Lagarde said. “A combined financing package of €10 billion is designed to help Cyprus cover its financing needs, including to service debt obligations, while it implements the policies needed to restore the health of the economy and regain access to capital market financing,” she said. Lagarde called the Cyprus programme “challenging” and said it would “require great efforts from the Cypriot population”. “We believe that it provides a durable and fully financed solution to the underlying problems facing Cyprus and provides a sustainable path toward a recovery. The fiscal and financial policies of the programme seek to distribute the burden of the adjustment fairly among the various segments of the population and to protect the most vulnerable groups,” Lagarde said. She said the IMF’s contribution would be through a
three-year loan of €1 billion, representing about 563 per cent of Cyprus’ quota, under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF). “The Cypriot authorities have put forward an ambitious, multi-year reform programme to address the economic challenges they face. The overarching goals are to stabilise the financial system, achieve fiscal sustainability, and support the recovery of economic activity to preserve the welfare of the population,” Lagarde says. She said the problems in the two largest banks were being addressed “upfront” with an approach that avoids putting additional burden on taxpayers and contributes to putting public debt on a sustainable path. “Importantly, insured depositors (representing over 95 per cent of the total number of account-holders in the two affected banks) have been fully protected,” said Lagarde. Secondly, she added, substantial fiscal consolidation measures for 2013-15 have been introduced with this year’s budget, implying limited need for additional fiscal measures in the short term. Thirdly, the government implemented a significant reform of the public wage indexation mechanism as well as important steps to improve the pension system’s long-term viability. Lagarde said the programme ahead rested on
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NEW FIRST LADY VISITS RED CROSS
Former First Lady and President of the Cyprus Red Cross, Fotini Papadopoulou (front) yesterday guided new First Lady Andri Anastasiades (back) around the offices of the charity in Nicosia. Anastasiades spoke to volunteers and browsed through some of the donated clothes at the Nicosia premises (Christos Theodorides)
Saudi court ‘orders criminal to be surgically paralysed’ By Sami Aboudi AMNESTY International has condemned a reported Saudi Arabian court ruling that a young man should be paralysed as punishment for a crime he committed ten years ago which resulted in the victim being confined to a wheelchair. The London-based human rights group said Ali al-Khawaher, 24, was reported to have spent ten years in jail waiting to be surgically paralysed unless his family pays one million Saudi riyals ($270,000) to the victim. The Saudi Gazette newspaper reported
last week that Khawaher had stabbed a childhood friend in the spine during a dispute a decade ago, paralysing him from the waist down. Saudi Arabia applies Islamic sharia law, which allows eye-for-an-eye punishment for crimes but allows victims to pardon convicts in exchange for so-called blood money. “Paralysing someone as punishment for a crime would be torture,” Ann Harrison, Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, said. “That such a punishment might be implemented is utterly shocking, even in a context where flogging is frequently imposed as a punishment for some of-
fences, as happens in Saudi Arabia,” she added. The al-Hayat daily quoted Khawaher’s mother as saying her son was a juvenile aged 14 at the time of the offence. She said the victim had demanded two million riyals to pardon her son and later reduced this to one million. “But we don’t have even a tenth of this sum,” she said. Amnesty said the case demonstrated the need for Saudi Arabia to review its laws to “remove these terrible punishments from the law”. Saudi judges have in the past ordered sharia punishments that include tooth extraction, flogging, eye gouging and - in murder cases - death.