Wow, and there is no money laundering, drugs, prostitution, gambling in any other country, or even God forbid the RoC ?
How pleased you must be if you were to google 'Cyprus' and 'money laundering' to see that it is all dedicated to the TRNC.
POLITIS of April 3, 2000 reported that, in a report prepared by the US State Department, South Cyprus was put on the list of high risk country's for laundering dirty money.
The daily reported that, the report identified South Cyprus as being a high risk country for money laundering, and ranked it sixth on the list of high risk countries after Austria, Australia, Canada, France and Germany
One of the biggest international, financial crimes of all time was committed with Cyprus’ help. An astronomical amount, estimated by the Serbian authorities to be in the region of $4.3 billion, was transferred to Cyprus from Serbia, between 1992 and 1998 and deposited in the bank accounts of eight companies controlled by the Milosevic regime.
The money was transferred in cash by an unorthodox method - cement bags were filled with banknotes and brought to Cyprus by plane. This money belonged to the Serbian people who were robbed by their president in an unprecedented case of fraud. This astronomical amount was stolen from Serbia’s customs and the reserves of its Central Bank.
As a result of this unbelievable scam, hundreds of thousands of poor people lost their savings. After the fall of the Milosevic regime, the government issued the people with bonds, thus showing that it recognised the rights of Milosevic’s victims and undertaking to return their money if it is ever found and returned to Serbia. This colossal financial crime took place in the knowledge of the Cyprus Central Bank, which played a disgraceful role.
MILLIONS OF pounds in cash were jammed into plastic bags and then shipped from Yugoslavia to Cyprus in the 1990s, in contravention of a UN embargo, a former Serbian bank treasurer testified in court yesterday.
Dusan Colic, who worked as a treasury manager at Beogradska Banka, described in detail how, “under instructions from above,” millions of Deutschmarks (DEM) were siphoned away to the island.
In January of 1998, The Lyon Croup (a/k/a The Senior Experts Croup,) an anti-money laundering arm of the G7 noted: "Cyprus is another center for R/EE/ECES [Russian/ Eastern European/ Eurasian Criminal Enterprises] front companies and money laundering operations. More than 8,000 Russians live in Cyprus year-round. In 1995, approximately 100,000 Russians visited the island as tourists or businessmen. In that same year, over $20 billion from Russia passed through the Cypriot banking system. There are eight Russian banks on Cyprus and over 7,000 registered Russian companies, only about one third of which conduct business there." [See Note 8]
Perhaps the most notable presence in Cyprus belonged to the Russian bank Inkombank, which was licensed by the Central Bank of Cyprus in 1993 under the name "Inkombank-Cyprus, Offshore Banking Unit." Since the mid nineties Inkombank and its principals have been linked to massive world-wide financial frauds, currency market manipulations, financing of narcotics trafficking, laundering of illicit proceeds, contract murder and other Russian mob-related activities.
and that's just a few on money laundering.
Maybe you're ok on prostitution.....
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=16684&cat_id=9
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2003/me_cyprus_06_03.html
Then again, maybe not.
I won't even bother with looking for drugs or gambling as you must have sorted those out
