Break your money!

“Cyprus seemed to be one of the most protected offshores. He adopted all the EU laws and lived according to British law. There are much more free offshores from a legal point of view, but it rushed precisely in Cyprus, ”a Greek entrepreneur, who had a part of the money in Cyprus, complained in a conversation with Slon. The financial collapse in Cyprus is somewhat reminiscent of the 1998 default in Russia. Both there and there the crisis provoked the inability to fulfill debt obligations (in the case of Cyprus, these are Greek bonds, there were GKO in Russia), bank accounts were frozen, depositors lost their savings. Not all customers of Russian banks returned money, some saw their depreciated deposits after many years. Will the depositors of Cyprus banks repeat their fate, intending to sue money that will fall under anti -crisis taxation? Media has already reported reports of possible lawsuits of the victims of the Cyprus crisis - companies and private depositors. Most likely, they will go to the European Court of Human Rights and will appeal to the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. More precisely, to her first protocol, which is aimed at protecting property and free disposal to them. But in the European Convention, as in the fundamental documents of other countries of the world (including the Russian Constitution), there are reservations that actually cross out all guarantees. For example, in the same protocol of the Convention, immediately after the chapter to the right to free disposal of its property, it is said that this does not “diminish the state of the state to ensure the implementation of such laws as it is necessary to exercise control over the use of property in accordance with common interests”. The Russian constitution also allows us to establish “individual restrictions on rights and freedoms” in a state of emergency. “The Constitutions of all democratic countries of the world that protect private property also provide for exceptions for its withdrawal on legal grounds, which include emergencies. In Cyprus, they just adopted such a law, ”says Alexander Zakharov, a partner of Paragon Advice Group. In his opinion, attempts to return the money seized from the depositors will be made, but the prospects of getting something very vague. You can try to blame the EU of a selective approach to choosing banks, whose depositors are forced to pay for other people's mistakes. Why did the choice fall only on these two banks, why are their customers put in an unequal position with customers of other banks? But even in this case, the European Court of Human Rights will rather bend to the validity and legality of the EU and Cyprus measures. So far, depositors of Cyprus banks are comforted only by one. The government promised them to compensate for part of the losses at the expense of future income from gas deposits. And here you can draw an analogy with Russia: some of the savings were returned to the victims of the default precisely thanks to the growth of energy prices in the 2000s. Well, there is no confidence in the financial world. Maybe natural wealth will help Cyprus?