Freezing Orders in Cyprus

Powerful, urgent, and demanding of the applicant

In short

Obtained urgently, usually without notice to the other side.
The applicant’s duties are as serious as the relief itself.
We apply for freezing orders, and we act for parties served with them.

A freezing order stops a party from dealing with its assets before the court decides the case. Because Cyprus companies sit inside international structures, a Cyprus freezing order often matters to a dispute being fought somewhere else entirely, and the law allows for that expressly: orders can be sought before an action is filed, and in support of proceedings running outside Cyprus.

Both sides of the experience make the advice better. Having discharged other people’s orders, we know what the respondent will attack; having obtained our own, we know what the judge needs to see.

If assets are about to move

Call first, then send the documents: what is owed, where the assets sit, and what suggests they are moving. A freezing application is prepared in days, and the preparation is mostly evidence. Call +357 22 680 330 or email office@kleanthousplatis.com.

The legal test

Three conditions, and a fourth in practice

All three must be satisfied together, and in a freezing case the third has a concrete shape.

The court’s power to grant interim orders rests on three statutory conditions: a serious question to be tried, a probability that the applicant is entitled to relief, and that unless the order is made it will be difficult or impossible to do complete justice at a later stage.

In a freezing application, the third condition takes the form of dissipation risk: a real prospect that, by the time judgment comes, the assets will have been disposed of or moved beyond the reach of the Cyprus courts. That risk is the heart of the application, and it must be concrete. A defendant who is merely foreign, or merely rich, is not enough: transfers to related parties, restructurings after the dispute surfaced, assets whose nature makes them movable overnight, that is the material the court acts on.

The power is flexible in time and place: an order can be sought before the claim is filed, and in relation to proceedings running outside Cyprus, judicial or arbitral.

The price of ex parte

Full and frank disclosure, and the undertaking

Relief obtained without notice comes with obligations the applicant cannot negotiate away.

Freezing relief is usually sought without notice, because notice defeats the purpose. In exchange, the applicant owes the court full and frank disclosure: every material fact goes before the judge, including everything that hurts the application. A material omission gives the respondent a ready ground to have the order set aside, with costs, and with the applicant’s credibility spent, although the court retains a discretion to vary rather than discharge where the omission was innocent and the facts still justify relief. It is not a gamble worth taking.

The applicant is also normally required to undertake to compensate the respondent if the order proves to have been wrongly granted, and the statute separately allows the court to order reasonable compensation for the damage the order’s execution caused. Freezing relief is powerful precisely because it carries obligations this serious.

What the order can reach

Accounts, shares, property, and information

An order that freezes unknown assets is a blunt instrument, so disclosure usually travels with it.

Orders can cover bank accounts, shares in Cyprus companies, immovable property and other assets, within limits the court sets, and they routinely carve out ordinary living and legal expenses.

The court can also order the respondent to disclose what assets exist and where. That power is real but not automatic: its scope is measured against what the freezing order actually needs, and orders drawn wider than their purpose have been struck down.

Where the information sits with a third party that is innocently mixed up in the wrongdoing, most often a bank, Cyprus courts grant Norwich Pharmacal orders compelling that third party to reveal what it knows. That remedy has its own article: see Norwich Pharmacal orders in Cyprus.

The other side of the order

If you have been served with one

Comply immediately, then attack. Improvisation in the first week is what loses these fights.

The order binds you from the moment you know of it, and breach is contempt. The response has a sequence: comply, then attack on the established grounds: material non-disclosure at the ex parte stage, no real risk of dissipation, an undertaking that is worthless, delay by the applicant, or an order wider than any legitimate purpose requires.

The living and legal expense provisions can usually be renegotiated even where the order itself survives. What loses respondents these fights is improvisation: transfers in the first week that look like exactly what the applicant predicted.

Common questions

How quickly can a freezing order be obtained in Cyprus?

In genuinely urgent cases, within days. The preparation is mostly evidence: tracing the assets, documenting the dissipation risk, and drafting the disclosure. If the case justifies moving, we say so and move; if it does not, we say that too, because an application that fails on discharge costs more than it ever protected.

Can assets be frozen before I file my claim?

Yes. The statute allows interim orders to be sought at any time, including before the claim is filed, and the order is then maintained through the proceedings it protects.

The main case is abroad. Can Cyprus assets still be frozen?

Yes. The power extends to proceedings outside the jurisdiction, and for arbitration the court has the same powers of interim protection wherever the seat is. This is one of the most common reasons foreign teams bring us in.

I have been served with a freezing order. What do I do first?

Comply, immediately and visibly, and take advice the same day. The grounds for discharge are established and are argued properly or not at all. What you must not do is move assets: breach is contempt, and early transfers become the applicant’s best evidence.

Who leads this work

Between them the partners bring more than 40 years of practice in Cyprus. Every matter is run by one of them.

Andreas Kleanthous

Partner

Litigation, personal injury and insurance claims, debt recovery, administrative law, real estate, wills and probate.

Klitos Platis

Partner

Litigation, corporate and commercial matters, property and construction, including pleadings, interim applications and trial preparation.

Written on this subject

Before instructing, send us the invoice, contract or loan documents and a short history of the debt. Kleanthous & Platis LLC, Nicosia. Telephone +357 22 680 330, office@kleanthousplatis.com or klitos@kleanthousplatis.com.

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Tell us briefly how we may assist

A few sentences is enough: which property, what stage the transaction has reached, and any date that matters. We reply within one business day. Please do not send confidential documents until we confirm we can act.

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