CYPRUS
Fault Lines
Some islands just don’t seem to get a break: These small nations are often directly in the path of nature’s fury.
But Cyprus hasn’t been hit by a hurricane. The European Union’s easternmost member is embroiled in a financial and political scandal – no surprise, given its recent history, some say.
In late December, the Guardian reported that the FBI is questioning Cypriot officials about FBME Bank, a small, Lebanese-owned institution which operates 90 percent of its business on the Mediterranean isle.
Earlier that month, Bloomberg reported that FBME was the subject of two US criminal investigations: one involving the bank’s credit-card operations, and another involving accusations of laundering money from a Russian fraud.
US regulators severed ties with the institution in 2016 after the Treasury Department accused it of laundering money for international terrorist and criminal organizations.
In a 2014 report obtained by the Guardian, the Central Bank of Cyprus found that FBME had banking relationships with a list of prominent, politically connected Russians, including one close to President Vladimir Putin.
Now US special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and possible Russian collusion is also looking into FBME, according to the Guardian.
Many say the island should have learned its lesson from a decade ago: The European financial crisis forced Cyprus to accept a three-year, multibillion-dollar rescue package from other Eurozone members to avoid insolvency.
Some facilitators of the faulty lending programs that catalyzed the crisis have been imprisoned, while European Investment Bank loans to small and medium-size businesses have helped bring the nation back from the brink, according to another Associated Pressreport.
Those might have been taken as indicators of a paradigm shift in financial handlings if it weren’t for the revelations over the past two months, say observers.
Meanwhile, UN-sponsored talks to reunite the Turkish and Greek zones of the island after 44 years of division collapsed in July. Now, new fault lines are appearing in Northern Cyprus.
Some residents of Northern Cyprus, which is recognized only by Turkey, worry the area is falling even deeper into its patron’s sphere of influence, Al Jazeera reported.
That influence is being felt, wrote the Guardian, in the deterioration of secularism in the breakaway region, once thought of as the most liberal enclave in the Muslim world.
That worry was reflected in a recent election in Northern Cyprus in which internal concerns overshadowed the island’s divided status and financial troubles, commentators pointed out.
It resulted in no clear parliamentary majority, mainly because many voters believed the leading party is too corrupt – and too subservient to Turkey.
Even so, Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades vowed to push on with attempts to reunify the ethnically divided island nation and buoy up the economy after he was re-elected Sunday, the AP reported.
“Tomorrow, a new day, a new era dawns,” he said. “… I call on all Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots to understand the current state of affairs cannot be a solution to the Cyprus problem.”
Time will tell if those solutions incorporate lessons learned.
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