A woman who was widowed last year, when her 54 year old husband died of a heart attack tells of her double loss.
Following the death of her husband Gary, Sharon Connor, who was running a successful scuba-diving business in South Cyprus felt unable to visit the house that she and her husband had purchased there.
Sharon, who had discovered her husband’s body in the house, decided to sell the property in March.
After only three days, she found a buyer. She then found a new home and job in the UK.
“I was trying to move forward with my life, until I found myself caught up in the nightmare scenario that has befallen Cyprus,” she said.
Sharon’s Cyprus house fetched 181,000 euros which was needed to purchase her new home in the UK. She said that the money was only meant to be deposited for one day and on that very same day she went into the bank and asked for her funds to be transferred to her UK account. However, after the strict imposition of bailout terms on bank deposits of amounts over 100,000 euros, she found that her assets were frozen and that she stood to lose 50,000 euros from Bank of Cyprus.
Despite having made every effort to recoup that money, it had only been deposited there by the purchaser and was not intended to be left there to gather interest; Sharon found that her repeated requests to get her money out were denied her by the Central Bank committee.
Grandmother to five children, her losses have affected her health and she has been forced to cash in her two private pensions to make ends meet.
In the meanwhile, Sharon lives in fear that her deposit will be reduced even further since the news emerged that Cyprus’ bailout requirements had jumped from 17.5 billion euros to 23 billion.
Sharon currently has put her furniture in storage and is living with family. She is unable to rent council accommodation since she has funds, albeit unobtainable.
Her final words were, that she hoped common sense would prevail and that she would eventually be able to access her money which represents her and her deceased husband’s life-savings.
