The Cyprus Broadcasting Cooperation (CyBC) has had all its bank accounts frozen, it emerged on Wednesday.
According to Politis, the accounts have been frozen by a decree obtained by the lawyer of Evdokia Loizou, the former CyBC employee who won compensation for an occupational illness she contracted – encephalitis – while working at the public broadcaster.
Loizou’s lawyer is Bar Association chairman Michalis Vorkas. The freezing in question is sourced from a decree issued by the Nicosia district court.
The accounts are set to be frozen until Loizidou receives the €1.3 million she is owed – €925,000 in damages and the remainder in VAT, interest, and legal fees – from CyBC.
The aim of freezing the accounts is to force CyBC to pay the amount owed immediately and as a lump sum, rather than in instalments as would usually be done by a semi-state organisation.
As a result, Politis writes, more than 70 cheques issued by CyBC have been returned unpaid.
CyBC is set to challenge the ruling in court on Thursday.
In the initial ruling which stipulated the payout to Loizou, the court found that viral encephalitis is an infectious parasitic disease caused by the environment. This causes acquired damage to the brain causing various neurological symptoms even in the long term.
It also found that Loizou suffered both great pain and suffering over a long period of time, and the residual effects that remained continue to plague her, affecting her quality of life, her personality, her activities, her career and her daily life 17 years later.
It added that Loizou had “succeeded in proving the necessary causal link between her illness and the poor working conditions at CyBC”. Back in 2012, Dr Athanasios Athanasiou from the Labour Inspection Department also reported that Loizou’s disease was caused by her workplace.
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