Favourable judgement for British Airways Cyprus employees’ provident fund

Our firm is glad to report that, on 18 December 2017, it secured a judgment in favour of the PROVIDENT FUND OF BRITISH AIRWAYS CYPRUS EMPLOYEES (“the Fund”) in the context of four applications brought before the Industrial Relations Court of Nicosia against it by ex-contributors of the Fund, who claimed the total amount of EUR 343.586 as compensation for the losses suffered thereby as a result of the “bail-in” measures imposed in March 2013 in the Republic of Cyprus. The applicants had claimed that the total amounts held in the Fund’s accounts were guaranteed by the Company and should be, therefore, returned to them by the Fund following the “haircut” imposed thereon.

We successfully defended the Fund by arguing that both the Fund and the Company had duly complied with the provisions of the Provident Fund Rules and that no additional amounts were owed to the applicants, a position which was ultimately accepted by the Court. By way of obiter, the Court held that the relationship between a provident fund and one of its members is one of trust and should not operate against the rights of the other members of the Fund; as such, the payment of any additional amounts to the applicants would be prejudicial to the rights of the remaining members of the Fund, by worsening their position due to the reduction of the amounts held by the Fund on their behalf.