Decisions made by the previous CySec council over the past five years, including penalties issued to financial services companies on the island, will be re-examined by the Commission in order of severity, adding substantially to its workload. Antoniadou said it was unlikely that the review would be completed by the time her five-year term as chairman comes to an end.
Antoniadou’s comments follow a statement last week, which revealed that the Supreme Court of Cyprus had ruled illegal the appointment of CySec’s members in 2006. Antoniadou, who replaced Georgios Charalambous in the role of Commission chairman last month, said reviewing the revoked decisions would be an “enormous” task.
She said: “It’s a big volume we have to deal with, and that’s why we have to prioritise the cases based on severity [of the offences], starting with the insider trading cases. Because we have new issues coming in, it is impossible for all cases to be [reviewed] within my five-year period here.”
As International Adviser reported yesterday, concerns have been expressed in Cyprus that the resources required to re-examine the cases could render the regulator toothless.
Antoniadou said it was unclear whether the Cypriot Government would be willing to pay for extra CySec personnel to help carry out the review. However, she added that she would not allow the additional workload to hamper her plans for the Commission to become more “developmental” in its approach, with the aim of attracting more financial firms to Cyprus.
Antoniadou also denied that the recent postponement of Mifid compliance exams, scheduled for December, was linked to the burden of reviewing the cases.
“The council will see how these examinations [can be made] more approachable and simple, compared with other countries,” Antoniadou said. “This will give more advantage to people who want to take the exams. It is something we will come back to, maybe at the beginning of 2012.”
