A Larnaca District Court judge has informed well-known Larnaca businessman Antonis Fanieros that it he cannot rule on his request to have his criminal record written off and that he must take his appeal to the Supreme Court.
Fanieros runs a string of businesses around the town while his son Loucas is the vocal chairman of football club Ermis Aradippou. The elder Fanieros had recently expressed his wish to run as an independent MP in the upcoming parliamentary elections.
The Larnaca magistrate said his court was not the appropriate legal body to rule on his request refering him instead to the Supreme Court.
Speaking to reporters after the hearing on Wednesday, Fanieros said he was “saddened by the ruling” adding that he would indeed be appealing to the Supreme Court and, if need be, to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Fanieros, 70, had previously stated that he would be donating his parliamentary salary “to the poor and to orphaned children.”
Violent past
Back in the nineties, the Fanieros family was allegedly involved in a bloody turf war with the Aeroporos family from Limassol – a feud which police say resulted in many deaths of family members as well as friends and associates from both sides.
In May 1997, Antonis Fanieros himself was the target of an attempted murder but survived despite being shot in the throat by machine gun fire as he left a nightclub.
Both father and son deny that they were ever involved in illegal gangland activities involving drugs, prostitution and illegal gambling.
Cyprus Weekly