Cyprus Mail: Press Review in English, 98-09-30

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From: The Cyprus Mail at <http://www.cynews.com/>

Wednesday, September 30, 1998

Kyprianou's son bought cheap plots?

REVELATIONS by Antenna TV that the family of a senior member of Diko had been buying plots of land in the Engomi area at half their market price were reported by most papers.

Machi was the only paper that named the Diko member. It said that all indications would seem to suggest that the report referred to Diko leader and President of the House Spyros Kyprianou. Disy deputy Christos Pourgourides came across this information by accident, while investigating records at the Land Registry office.

It said that Kyprianou's elder son Achilleas had in 1992 bought two plots of land at £27,000 each, but the Land Surveys Department had valued them at £45,000 each. He then bought a third plod for the same amount, but again Land Surveys valued it as £45,000.

Simerini reported that Pourgourides had warned his party, Disy, that a storm of protest would be raised if it tried to remove him from the chairmanship of the House Watchdog Committee. He called on the party officially to deny reports that Disy leader Nicos Anastassiades would raise the issue of his removal.

Pourgourides said he felt that Anastassiades would back his anti-corruption crusade. If he did not, he would cause a major political crisis within Disy, whose members are honest people who want to see a clean-up of the political scene.

Alithia led with a report of the revelations made by convicted murderer Andreas Aristodemou, alias Yiouroukkis, who was in court for a libel hearing. Yiouroukkis, serving a life sentence, admitted murdering the cabaret impresario Artin Bahadourian during a botched up burglary attempt and named the moral instigators of the crime.

He also said that he had heard that his brother, who was murdered a few years ago, was involved in the sale of hard drugs. He believed that his brother was killed by one of his business partners, who died later in a car bomb explosion.

Phileleftheros reported that the Cyprus and US governments would enter a direct agreement over the cancellation of the deployment of the S-300 missiles, in order to get round the Turkish side's refusal to discuss the matter. It was unclear whether Washington would be entering a similar agreement with Turkey.

This had been the subject of US State Department envoy Thomas Miller's discussions with the Cyprus government in New York.

Haravghi led with the observation that the deadlock in the Cyprus problem remained as no major initiative was expected in the next month. It said that low-key diplomatic contacts would continue in an effort to test the ground in view of Rauf Denktash's proposal for a confederation.

© Copyright Cyprus Mail 1998

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