Crooked property developer Gary Robb was slapped with an eight-day remand order by a Cyprus court on Thursday for cheating fellow Britons out of millions for holiday homes he could not deliver in the Turkish occupied north of the sialnd.
Robb was arrested in the U.K. under a European arrest warrant and was handed over to Cyprus Police in London on Wednesday.
The Nicosia District Court heard that the 48-year-old Briton is being investigated for conspiracy to commit felony and misdemeanor, unlawful possession, distribution and use of property registered to another person, obtaining money under false pretences and other offenses related to the illegal exploitation of Greek Cypriot properties in the occupied village of Klepini in the Kyrenia district.
The case focuses on the fact that of the development’s total expanse of about 274,000 square metres, 261,589 belongs to Greek Cypriot refugees who fled when Turkey invaded in 1974, a further 4,661 sq.m. is property held in the name of the Republic of Cyprus and 7,550 sq.m. was owned by Turkish Cypriots.
Robb’s company, Aga Development Ltd., launched the project of 335 villas in August 2004. Construction began in January 2005 and by April 2005, 85% of the buildings were sold.
But the potential owners knew little about ongoing property cases whereby Greek Cypriots had resorted to the European Court of Human Rights and were suing the Turkish government and other occupants of their abandoned properties for illegal use, demanding compensation and return of their properties.
The Cyprus police investigator told the court on Thursday that so far 25 persons have been questioned in connection with the case and another 27 are pending while a large number of documents has been obtained.
According to newspaper reports, Robb escaped to northern Cyprus after being released on bail for drug dealing in the UK in 1996. After 13 years of hiding out in the north, Robb was recaptured in January 2009 and sentenced to five years in a UK jail.
In June, England’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) told the Cyprus Mail he would be extradited to Cyprus based on a European arrest warrant issued by the Cypriot authorities in relation to the usurping of Greek Cypriot properties in the occupied areas.
The newspaper added that the CPS said the warrant listed nine offences and stated that “between 2004 and 2005, the defendant conspired with others (named as Tuncel Tahir Soycan and Akan Kursat Talat) to develop land which did not belong to them, and to sell villas built without permission upon that land by means of false representations to the prospective purchasers”.
Following his release on parole last month in the UK, Robb was re-arrested ahead of his intended extradition.
British police believe around 400 Britons collectively lost in the region of 35 mln UK pounds in deals with Robb’s AGA Developments. AGA’s notorious Amaranta Valley project located close to the north coastal village of Klepini still consists of 500 rapidly decaying half-built properties.
What Are Cookies
As is common practice with almost all professional websites, our site uses cookies, which are tiny files that are downloaded to your device, to improve your experience.
This document describes what information they gather, how we use it and why we sometimes need to store these cookies. We will also share how you can prevent these cookies from being stored however this may downgrade or ‘break’ certain elements of the sites functionality.
How We Use Cookies
We use cookies for a variety of reasons detailed below. Unfortunately, in most cases there are no industry standard options for disabling cookies without completely disabling the functionality and features they add to the site. It is recommended that you leave on all cookies if you are not sure whether you need them or not, in case they are used to provide a service that you use.
The types of cookies used on this website can be classified into one of three categories:
- Strictly Necessary Cookies. These are essential in order to enable you to use certain features of the website, such as submitting forms on the website.
- Functionality Cookies.These are used to allow the website to remember choices you make (such as your language) and provide enhanced features to improve your web experience.
- Analytical / Navigation Cookies. These cookies enable the site to function correctly and are used to gather information about how visitors use the site. This information is used to compile reports and help us to improve the site. Cookies gather information in anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors came from and the pages they viewed.
Disabling Cookies
You can prevent the setting of cookies by adjusting the settings on your browser (see your browser’s “Help” option on how to do this). Be aware that disabling cookies may affect the functionality of this and many other websites that you visit. Therefore, it is recommended that you do not disable cookies.
Third Party Cookies
In some special cases we also use cookies provided by trusted third parties. Our site uses [Google Analytics] which is one of the most widespread and trusted analytics solutions on the web for helping us to understand how you use the site and ways that we can improve your experience. These cookies may track things such as how long you spend on the site and the pages that you visit so that we can continue to produce engaging content. For more information on Google Analytics cookies, see the official Google Analytics page.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is Google’s analytics tool that helps our website to understand how visitors engage with their properties. It may use a set of cookies to collect information and report website usage statistics without personally identifying individual visitors to Google. The main cookie used by Google Analytics is the ‘__ga’ cookie.
In addition to reporting website usage statistics, Google Analytics can also be used, together with some of the advertising cookies, to help show more relevant ads on Google properties (like Google Search) and across the web and to measure interactions with the ads Google shows.
Learn more about Analytics cookies and privacy information.
Use of IP Addresses. An IP address is a numeric code that identifies your device on the Internet. We might use your IP address and browser type to help analyze usage patterns and diagnose problems on this website and to improve the service we offer to you. But without additional information your IP address does not identify you as an individual.
Your Choice. When you accessed this website, our cookies were sent to your web browser and stored on your device. By using our website, you agree to the use of cookies and similar technologies.
More Information
Hopefully the above information has clarified things for you. As it was previously mentioned, if you are not sure whether you want to allow the cookies or not, it is usually safer to leave cookies enabled in case it interacts with one of the features you use on our site. However, if you are still looking for more information, then feel free to contact us via email at [email protected]