Cypriot archbishop urges finance
minister to quit
The head of Cyprus’ influential Orthodox Church has dealt a hammer blow to the island’s economic leaders by becoming the first major figure to call for their resignations.
Caption: Archbishop Chrysostomas II offered the government the entire wealth of the Church in a bid to prevent a raid on Cypriot bank deposits. Photo: AFP/Getty Images
By Denise Roland7:33PM BST 31 Mar 201357 Comments
Archbishop Chrysostomos II, who had urged for eurozone exit over an onerous bail-out, declared on Sunday that finance minister Michalis Sarris and central bank governor Panicos Demetriades should step down after allowing the EU-IMF lenders to devastate the island’s banking sector in return for a €10bn (£8.4bn) loan.
The missive is the latest public criticism to come from the island’s religious leader since his failed bid to avert a raid on Cypriot savings by offering the church’s entire wealth to shore up the struggling economy.
His call emerged a day after the central bank unveiled much worse than feared measures on uninsured deposits - those over €100,000 - in the island’s largest lender, Bank of Cyprus.
In an arrangement which will see more than €100m wiped off the Cypriot Orthodox Church’s assets, up to 60pc could be slashed from uninsured savings in the Bank of Cyprus, while large depositors in the island’s other major lender Laiki Bank stand to lose 80pc of anything over €100,000 as it is broken up and wound down.
“If I was satisfied, I would not have called on them the other day to resign and leave, because they have the same views as the troika [of international lenders],” said the archbishop.
“We put up no resistance [to the terms imposed by the troika] and I think this is unacceptable,” he said.
Meanwhile pressure is mounting on the British government which has yet to clinch a deal to protect savers in Laiki’s four UK branches, where uninsured deposits remain frozen in a so-called ‘bad bank’ as part of the lender’s wind-down.
Chancellor George Osborne vowed last week to try to protect Laiki’s UK branches, which are set to be subject to the same heavy losses as those in Cyprus, from being “sucked into the Cypriot resolution process”.
