issue 25
april 14 - may 13
2013
6 EDITORIAL
8 up front
16 FIVE MINUTES WITH…
17
YES
WE
CAN
+ opinion
The bailout agreement
reached with the Troika
undoubtedly marks the
end of an era for the
Cyprus banking system
but how will it affect the
country’s professional
services sector?
35
ndrey dashin, the millionaire russian businessman behind
the alpari family of online forex service providers and, more
recently, of his own new venture forextime, has no intention
of quitting cyprus now that things have suddenly become
tough. in this exclusive interview he dismisses the german
press’s money laundering allegations as “mass media noise”,
praises the professionalism of those involved in the services
sector and explains why he pays to keep the road leading to the limassol village where he lives free of litter and rubbish.
By JohnVickers, Photography by Jo Michaelides
Gold: Given the success of Alpari, what
made you create ForexTime?
Andrey Dashin: In Alpari we hired the best
professionals to sit on the Board of Directors
while the main shareholders mainly restricted
themselves to being just that and were not
involved in the day-to-day business. But I’m
young and very active and I felt the need to
do something, to create a new company in
which I could implement my own ideas –
sometimes controversial ideas! – and my own
vision. In Alpari there were many people, all
mature industry professionals, who shared
this vision and my expectations and so I
have brought them with me to ForexTime.
Fortunately everything is going according to
plan. As an international company it doesn’t
rely exclusively on activity in Cyprus so in this
sense it is “crisis-resilient”.
Gold: You set up ForexTime knowing that
Cyprus was already negotiating a bailout
with the Troika, which suggests that you
were, in a sense, making a point and stating your faith in Cyprus. Would you agree
with this interpretation?
A.D.: Yes and I still believe in the future of
Cyprus because it still has the prerequisites
that will enable it to continue as an international financial centre. First of all, the people
here are top quality professionals. From
the standpoint of the labour market, I have
always believed that Cyprus offers me good
opportunities. The other side of this equation
concerns regulation and the Cypriot authorities. The financial authorities and, from what
I know, the people in the new government
are experienced, business-oriented people. I
believe in these people. We speak the same
language. I’ve had many conversations with
them and I know how they think and what
they want. We’ve been able to establish a
very good, close collaboration between the
business community and the authorities and
I believe that this stable partnership will be
maintained.
Real
businessmen
turn a negative
situation into
something
posItIve
Gold: Do you believe that the countries
of the eurozone and their partners were
specifically targeting Russian money
when formulating a bailout plan for
Cyprus?
A.D.: No, I don’t. First of all, I don’t believe
in the “nationality” of money. Money is
money. Secondly, I don’t believe in these
conspiracy theories about Russian money
and money laundering. I discount them as
“mass media noise” which we need to dispel
and see the root cause of the problem: that
the Cyprus banking system had become
disproportionately overblown and we all
knew this. Implementation of this bailout
will mean that the Cyprus banking system
is going to shrink – I don