Do you think that maybe they knew this and might have dropped a dime on this action beforehand?
It’s possible. Cyprus is somewhat notorious in the EU as a money-laundering center and a haven for folks on the lam.
Interestingly, the Cypriot Parliament hasn’t ratified this yet....that’s expected tomorrow. They’re between a rock and hard place, a major Catch-22.
If they vote “yes”, then the depositors take a 6.75 to 9.9% loss. If they vote “no”, Popular Bank will go bust, as the ECB has refused to extend emergency liquidity, and the Central Bank of Cyprus can’t take that kind of hit. If Popular Bank goes under, it takes the rest of the banking sector with it. One of those “too-big-to-fail” scenarios, if you will.
Interestingly, this really doesn’t apply to Northern Turkey, unless a person is a TRNC resident and has a bank account with a South Cyprus-based bank. I recall there’s tons of Turkish-based banks in the Northern sector, so for them, this isn’t as big an issue as it is for the folks in the Greek part of the island.