Libra holidays, Allbury Travel Group and E-Clear the end of story

I hate predicting bad news. Two months ago my intuition and the market made me think that Allbury Travel group was going to go down the drain taking with them customers and suppliers and so I published it here

The websites of the group are already down and they stop selling those destinations the group used to have in its portfolio. The hotels in Greece, Turkey, Cyprus etc. are getting nervous, the handing agents are hitting their heads and the authorities keep silent.

The perfect excuse is the financial crisis; the reality though is still to be proven. I am sorry to see that once again the law and its guardians are unable to stop fraud. What is going to happen now? Are they going to come back with a new name? New directors? New image? This is a movie we saw again.
Anyway this was a nasty Christmas present for the 100 passengers in destinations and the 4000 customers that made bookings with them.

My only advice to hotels and suppliers is to revise their collaborators, look at their contacts and make sure they have all the guarantees in place locally as well. Allbury Travel Group has never obtained any kind of licence in Cyprus for example and they had contracts with many hotels.

According to the Daily Telegraph there is more to that, it seems that the Greek Elias Elia, E-Clear's chief executive is understood to have a controlling stake in Allbury's parent company. Allbury has also been linked to the card-payment processor under examination by the administrators of Globespan.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is pursuing E-Clear to find out why the company held back more than £30m owed to Globespan, the owner of Flyglobespan.com, which operated flights from Scotland to holiday destinations such as Spain.

Allbury Travel Group will go bankrupt

The travel organisation the is led by Andreas Drakou and his collaborators will not support the pressure and will announce its bankruptcy just before Christmas,

This is what we think since the payments for last summer’s accommodation and services in Cyprus are paid with great delays and after huge pressures from the stakeholders.

Allbury Travel  that took over all Libra Holidays operations 2 years ago it was contempt to die since the directors were still managing the finances of the company as if they were their pocket money.

I am wondering how many tourists will stay in destinations and how many booking will remain unpaid.
It seems that hoteliers and other suppliers do not understand the bankruptcy of Allbury will take the reputation of the Cypriot Travel Product even lower.

I guess after this post I will get another phone call from them asking why I give them bad name. They will get their answer soon ... even better they will answer the question themselves in less than 2 months time.

Illegal operation of Libra Holidays in Cyprus

Libra Accommodations CY LTD, the company that signed accommodation contacts with Cypriot Hoteliers was operating illegally in Cyprus.

After the court case P.C Mavros Vs Libra in Cyprus (Paphos District Court (case number 3806/07) dated 26 Nov. 2008 9 the vale was uncovered. According to the Cypriot Registrar of Companies, Libra Accommodations (CY) LTD with Directors among others Mr. Adreas Drakou (known as managing director of the fatal Helios Airways ) , Mr. Themis Drakou , Mr. Adreas Koumis (who resigned the 13th of March 2007), Mr. Theodoros Antoniou (who also resigned the 20th of June 2007) was formed as a company the 17th of February 2000. This company has since then signed various accommodation contacts with various hotels in the Republic of Cyprus but they NEVER had an operating licence on the island. The Cyprus Tourism Organisation has never given this company a licence to operate as an incoming travel agent and therefore Libra Accommodations CY Ltd has never been a proper, legal tour operator or travel agent with licence to bring tourist in Cyprus.

In 2007 Libra stop paying many hoteliers among others the small hotel Apollo Hill in Pafos. After long discussions and negotiations Apollo Hill operated by a family company ( P.C. Mavros and Sons LTD) took the case to the court and on the 26th of November 2008 the court decided against Libra. When the civil servants of the court went to Libra offices in Limassol, they discover that the company had nothing at all as moveable of fixed assets, neither any cash to fulfil the decision of the court.

P.C. Mavros and Sons LTD has contacted the Cyprus Tourism Organisation (CTO) offices in order to claim the bank guarantee all agents deposit according to the law. It was then when the owner of P.C. Mavros and sons LTD discovered that Libra did not even requested an operating licence.

As a conclusion we can say that Libra Holidays that is the mother company of Libra Accommodations has been operating since the year 2000 (for 9 years until today) illegally in Cyprus.

Picture Above: From left to the right:

Mr. Photis Photiou (President of CTO in 2005), Mr. Andreas Drakou (Managing Director of Libra Holidays Group), Akis Kyprianou (Executive Director of Libra Holidays Group- in 2005 who resigned in 2007).

Libra Holidays Press Release

Libra Holidays pays older debts

Hoteliers in Cyprus have finally received payments for the year 2008. Debts Libra Holidays created in 2008 are now, after a year, being paid by the new owners of Libra.

In spring 2008 Vasilis and Aimon, two directors , from the central offices of Libra in the UK were touring Cyprus agreeing with hoteliers the final debts for the season 2008. Various hoteliers have got their money (if not all a big percentage at least) and some of those hoteliers have cancelled commitment contacts for the current season (2009) since they are afraid of a second big time bankruptcy of Allbury Travel Group. The market in Cyprus has lost all the confidence in the company run by Andreas Drakou and his partners. The financial whole created in 2007 is still too big despite that court cases were won in Cyprus. Specifically a hotelier was very surprised to see that after winning the court case the court clearing agent went to the offices of Libra Holidays in Limassol but came back with empty hands since Libra was basically a ghost company without any assets, not even the office furniture belong t them.

If you are a hotelier I would suggest you contact Vasilis and / or Aimon at +44 871 226 7838 at Libra Holidays C/o Castle House 21 Station Road New Barnet Hertfordshire EN5 1PH or email at admin@allburytravelgroup.com and try to get your money for the year 2008 and think about accepting bookings from them. In my opinion the only bookings you could accept is pre-paid bookings before customer arrival.

Helios Directors face 1.190 charges... finally after 4 years

Four years after the Helios Airways disaster 4 directors of the company are now prosecuted. Andreas Drakou President of Helios (also heavily involved in the Libra Holidays fraud), Demetris Pantazis Managing Director of the Airline, Giorgos Kikkidis, director for flights and Ianko Stoimenov chief pilot and training director. The four of them are facing 1.190 accusations each.

Here the question is what is going to happen next? Are those people going to jail? Are they going to banned from running an airline again? I think that in Cyprus we did not reach this level of democracy yet. In Cyprus is much easier to go to jail if you broke in a house than being probably responsible for the death of 121 people (they are accused for 119 not for the pilot and the co-pilot).

Andreas Drakou has been in the market of Cyprus tourism for many years. For many ignorant people he was considered one of the “fathers” of tourism in Cyprus with the descent of Libra Holidays as the savior of the Tourism Industry of Cyprus. It was then when he managed to convince hoteliers to partner with him and today 90% of the hotels Libra has agreements are still unpaid , some of them since 2007.

Libra Holidays, choose Libra for your hotel so you go bankrupt

After several conversations with hoteliers in Cyprus and Greece I realised that Libra Holidays Group, also known as Alburry Travel Group has literally sent to bankruptcy lots of hotels and their families. This is well known but what was not that known is that the same situation happens in Turkey and Egypt. After some investigation I found out that Mr. Adreas Drakou and his environment managed to cheat many more naïf hoteliers also in Turkey and Egypt.

I have a list of apox 60 hotels and correspondence with some of them that proves that.

I am wondering why the hoteliers do not reveal and go against the owners of Libra worldwide. The owners are Andreas Drakou and other honourable businessmen form Cyprus and the UK and at the end of the day they are also victims of this big fraud since Drakou dragged them in the ditch.

There is a law office that deals with cases like that, very successful in similar cases and if the hoteliers of Cyprus, Greece (E.U countries) can join forces they will be able to recover their money. The money Libra and co took form the hoteliers is not lost, they became plots in Sharm el Sheik, in Bulgaria and Romania.

In these times of crisis we need to be united and get those companies and their owners out of the market.