The law firm of President Tasso Papadopoulos seems to be directly involved in the joint venture that has been chosen to build a 1.5-billion-dollar offshore liquidation and storage terminal for liquefied natural gas (LNG) to be used by the island’s state-owned power utility at Vassiliko, news reports revealed Thursday.
The choice of hiring a floating unit for five years until a land-based terminal is built was the cause of a 24-hour strike at the Electricity Authority of Cyprus on Wednesday as employees argued that the offshore option was not economical and would cost the utility and consumers dearly, both financially and politically.
The EAC unions said the government backtracked on a previous decision taken a year ago that would have seen the creation of a land-based liquidation and storage facility by the end of 2009, well within Cyprus’ obligations to introduce cleaner fuels for energy production.
The Cabinet decided last week to go ahead with the land-based terminal, but that this would take five years to complete and not three, and that a floating unit would be used during that time to supply the EAC’s power plant at Vassiliko with LNG.
Government spokesman Vassilis Palmas was quick to deny any reports of wrongdoing, saying that the president’s law firm was only involved in the establishment of the companies and was not involved in their management.
He admitted that the law firm of Tassos Papadopoulos & Co. registered the joint venture company Vasilikos L.N.G. and its 49% shareholder Apollo N.G. Trading, both with Cypriot owners, in July 2005, and that there was no further involvement.
Palmas did not say who the Cypriot owners were.
But the reports in the top-circulation daily Phileleftheros and the opposition newspaper Alithia showed that Tassos Papadopoulos & Co.’s subsidiary Iver Management was the 100% shareholder of Apollo NG Trading with the law firm’s managing partner, Pambos Ioannides, as the company’s director and two other lawyers, Nicos Papaefstathiou and Marios Eliades, appearing as nominee shareholders.
Palmas criticized the reports in Phileleftheros and Alithia as being damaging to the president, adding that “we have seen similar reports in the past and I am sure that we will see more in view of the [presidential] election campaign.â€
The two dailies alleged that the president’s law firm established the companies, is the registered address for the companies and administers the companies.
Swiss-based SBM Holdings is the 51% joint venture partner and the government spokesman said that it has its own U.K.-based lawyers who have appointed the
The Alithia report cited news appearing on the Greek news site Gnews.gr as suggesting that according to the minutes of a meeting on March 9 between Commerce Minister Antonis Michaelides and representatives from SBM and their supplier Gaz de France that they were sure to clinch the deal for the offshore terminal.
During the same meeting, Minister Michaelides was allegedly assured that if the agreement was concluded within 2007, then
