The first payments in compensation to depositors who lost their savings in the devastating bank bail-in of 2013 will be sent out by the end of June this year, Finance Minister Makis Keravnos promised on Thursday.

Speaking after a meeting with President Nikos Christodoulides and members of the association of bondholders (Sykata), Keravnos said the government had undertaken to promote the compensation of burned depositors and bondholders, who saw their assets wiped out in the financial meltdown.

Sykata president Stavros Yiallourides said that there was indeed hope and thanked the president for keeping his pre-election promises.

“At last, 13 years later, we are in the happy position to hope that this great injustice against us will be rectified. Finally, the first step has been taken,” he said.

Yiallourides said that Christodoulides’ government “saw the issue in its true dimensions and at last the payment of compensation to those lawfully eligible, those who were sacrificed in 2012 and 2013, to save the state.”

“We have a marathon to run, but at long last this course has started,” he said.

In March 2013, big savers with the Bank of Cyprus had 47.5 per cent of their uninsured deposits (any amount over €100,000) converted into shares, under the terms of an international bailout.

As for Laiki Bank, all uninsured deposits there were wiped out, and the lender was wound down and its operations folded into the Bank of Cyprus.

Under the bailout programme between Cyprus and its lenders, large depositors paid for the recapitalisation of the Bank of Cyprus, heavily exposed to debt-crippled Greece.