{"id":9565,"date":"2023-04-13T18:00:44","date_gmt":"2023-04-13T18:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/cyprus-probes-how-its\/"},"modified":"2023-04-13T18:01:29","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T18:01:29","slug":"cyprus-probes-how-its","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/cyprus-probes-how-its\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyprus probes how its citizens got on Russia-linked sanctions list"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NICOSIA (Reuters) &#8211;     Cyprus is investigating how a number of its nationals ended up on U.S. and British sanctions lists for allegedly cooperating with sanctioned Russians, a spokesman said on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>Cypriot-based entities and individuals were named on British and American sanctions lists on Wednesday as facilitating business transactions of persons already under sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>Cyprus President Nikos Christodoulides called a meeting on Thursday with close aides on the matter, government spokesman Konstantinos Letymbiotis said. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;During the meeting the developments were discussed, there was an exchange of views and it was decided&#8230; to investigate the information which led to the imposition of sanctions,&#8221; he said in a written comment.<\/p>\n<p>Cyprus, where many companies with Russian-backed interests have operations, follows European Union sanctions against Russia imposed over its invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>Britain said Wednesday sanctions were imposed on two people it accused of being &#8220;financial fixers&#8221; for Russian businessmen Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov. They were identified as Cypriots Demetris Ioannides, who runs an accountancy firm, and Christodoulos Vassiliades, who runs a legal practice.<\/p>\n<p>Vassiliades was also named in an updated U.S. sanctions list issued on Wednesday. The Cypriot lawyer has denied any action which may have merited any sanctions. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We have not offered services or assistance to any person included in the relevant sanctions lists, in violation of those sanctions,&#8221; Vassiliades said in a statement, according to the semi-official Cyprus News Agency.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;On the contrary, we conformed and continue to conform with whatever is stipulated, with whatever that entails.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Attempts to contact Ioannides for comment were not immediately successful. <\/p>\n<p \/>\n<p> (Writing by Michele Kambas; editing by Mark Heinrich)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/cyprus-probes-how-its\/cyprus-president-nikos-christodoulides-talks-with-former-president-nicos-anastasiades\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3C0R4-VIEWIMAGE.jpg\" alt=\"tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3C0R4-VIEWIMAGE\"><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NICOSIA (Reuters) &#8211; Cyprus is investigating how a number of its nationals ended up on U.S. and British sanctions lists for allegedly cooperating with sanctioned Russians, a spokesman said on Thursday. Cypriot-based entities and individuals were named on British and American sanctions lists on Wednesday as facilitating business transactions of persons already under sanctions. Cyprus [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":9566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3C0R4-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9567,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9565\/revisions\/9567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}