The Supreme Administrative Court in Nicosia found its electricity had been cut off after it had given an interim order yesterday in the case against the state electricity supplier Kib-Tek regarding the unlawful purchase of contaminated fuel, Yeniduzen reported.
Chairman of the Union of Bar Associations, Hasan Esendağlı, announced the decision on Wednesday regarding the lawsuit filed by Sidereal Lines Ltd against Kib-Tek.
The fact that the power to the court was cut off the day after the interim order was given was “defying the judiciary” and was a very ugly reaction, Esendağlı said.
Hasan Esendağlı said that the court’s fuel bills are paid regularly and noted that the power outage had also occurred in the Kyrenia district. Kib-Tek is legally obliged to comply with the interim order, he said.
The lawsuit was brought because Sidelreal Lines Ltd, along with private Turkish company AKSA and Turkish Petroleum (TPIC) had had their tenders to supply 220,000 tonnes of fuel to Kib-Tek revoked by the Minister of Economy and Energy, Erhan Arikli on 21 August. Kib-Tek had only three days of fuel left and was eking out its remaining fuel supplies by imposing power alternating cuts across the country. It is reported that it takes 20 days to relaunch tenders.
Following which, the Council of Ministers ordered an emergency purchase of 36,000 tonnes of fuel from TPIC without tender, a move deemed to be illegal, after Energy Minister Erikli revoked all the original tenders. This act gave rise to a second debacle regarding the quality of fuel purchased.
A number of parties concerned about the quality of the fuel have asked for the fuel analysis list, with no success. Turkish Cypriot daily ‘Yeniduzen’ asked for a list of contents of the batch of fuel but were only given reports on the first 5 of 22 elements.
Ali Murat Cellatoğlu, President of the Chamber of Electrical Engineers (EMO) said at the time, “If it is a standard product, the [test] results have not explained. The only reason is that it does not conform to the standard”.
