Pafos Live 9 September 2024
A 27-year-old Greek Cypriot man was arrested for hunting in a restricted area and for using his weapon inside a vehicle.
Following information from citizens that a vehicle was moving within a prohibited area of the village of Arodes and the passenger was shooting from inside the car, police arrested a 27-year-old Greek Cypriot who is expected to be charged in court.
Another of his peers is being sought for the same case. The two youths allegedly fired shots from inside the vehicle in a restricted area for summer hunting.
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A case of assault causing actual bodily harm against three persons is being investigated by the Pafos Police. One person is wanted in the case.
According to the Police, three injured persons were taken on September 6 to the Accident and Emergency Department of Paphos General Hospital after allegedly being attacked.
The three persons reported to police that they were attacked by some persons with aggressive instruments and the alleged perpetrators managed to escape. The three who were attacked were taken to Paphos Hospital where, according to the on-duty doctor, they had abrasions. The complaint by the three complainants was made yesterday, Saturday 7 September and the Paphos Police are looking for one person.
The examinations in the case are being investigated by the Paphos Police.
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Filenews
Police arrested a 21-year-old man at dawn in connection with kidnapping and threats against a 26-year-old man in Limassol. The case was reported by the 26-year-old on Sunday morning.
According to what the complainant told investigators, at around 7.15am. Yesterday, he received a call from the 21-year-old, who asked him to meet to go for a walk. A short time later, the 21-year-old went to the 26-year-old's home in his car and picked him up. Inside the vehicle, there was reportedly another unidentified person.
According to the complainant, during their journey, the 21-year-old and the stranger began threatening to kill him. When the vehicle stopped at a red traffic light, the complainant opened the door and exited the car. The 21-year-old allegedly tried to hold him by pulling him by the pants, but the 26-year-old managed to escape.
A judicial arrest warrant was issued against the 21-year-old under which he was arrested last night and taken into custody to facilitate interrogations.
The ICF Limassol is investigating the case.
Update - He denies involvement in the threatened and kidnapping case under investigation involving the 26-year-old complainant, the young suspect who was handcuffed.
The young man was brought on Monday morning before the Limassol District Court, which ordered his detention for a period of 4 days. Behind the strange kidnapping case seems to be hidden, according to the allegations of the 26-year-old complainant, drugs and specifically transportation by him of a suitcase to a point in the village of Akrotiri a few months ago.
According to the 26-year-old complainant, on Sunday morning and while he was at his residence he received a phone call from the 21-year-old suspect, with whom he maintained friendly relations, so that the latter could pick him up in order to go for a walk.
The 21-year-old, according to the complaint of the complainant, went around 07:30 yesterday morning to the residence of the 26-year-old, where he was picked up while another person was with them. The two people started pressuring the 26-year-old, asking him about a suitcase he had carried a few months ago to a spot in the village of Akrotiri in Limassol.
During their journey, the 21-year-old and the unidentified man began threatening the 26-year-old, telling him "if you don't tell us where the suitcase is, we will kill you and make you partisan".
Also, according to the 26-year-old, the unknown man urged the 21-year-old suspect to take him to the area of the Kouris dam, to drag him until he told them where the suitcase was. When the vehicle stopped at the junction of Nikos Pattichi and Spyrou Avenue Kyprianou, since the traffic light was red, the complainant opened the door and exited the car.
The 21-year-old allegedly tried to hold him by pulling him by the pants, but the 26-year-old managed to escape. After the incident, the 26-year-old filed a complaint with the police. Tests identified the vehicle and the 21-year-old suspect driver who was arrested on a court warrant.
Under questioning, the 21-year-old denied any involvement in the case and claimed that he did not know the 26-year-old and was at his residence at the time in question. He said he doesn't know how to drive and doesn't have a driver's license.
Another person is being sought in the case, who according to the complainant was a co-driver in the 21-year-old's vehicle and an unknown person.
Regarding the suitcase in question, the 26-year-old told the police that during the month of April, he had transported a suitcase at the behest of another person to a point in the village of Akrotiri and received a reward of €100. He also claimed that he suspected it was drugs after the recent arrest of a person who he said was related to the 70kg drug case.
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An arrest warrant for the alleged perpetrator of the homophobic attack on a man in Limassol was issued this morning and is being sought.
He is, as we are informed, a martial arts connoisseur.
According to the complaint, the young man received offensive comments about his sexual orientation from a person while passing with a friend outside a nightclub in Limassol.
As he claims in his post, he and a friend were passing outside the nightclub and without even trying to enter it, they were verbally attacked by the security guard. He said the guard also physically attacked him.
In a statement, Accept LGBTI Cyprus and especially Limassol Accept LGBTI Group condemns the attack.
"We condemn in the strongest possible terms the cowardly attack on people in our community and make it clear that no attack, whether verbal or physical, will be tolerated and declare that we will exhaust everyone means ensuring that the people behind any form of attack are punished in an exemplary manner.
We call on all our members, the Cyprus Police, the Mayor and the Limassol Municipal Council and all relevant bodies to condemn and take appropriate measures to ensure that responsibility is taken and appropriate sanctions are imposed. Intimidation, any violence and hateful behaviour at will is neither acceptable nor tolerated," the statement said.
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Police arrested two people aged 23 and 31 as part of an investigation into conspiracy to commit a felony, theft and extortion of money by false representations.
Specifically, on 06/09/2024, a 20-year-old employee of a mobile phone store reported to the Police that on 05/06/2024, their online store received online orders from three different users for the purchase of six mobile phones worth 1,320 euros each. Payments were normally made using three different foreign bank cards, while two persons presented themselves at the branch and received the mobile phones.
A month later, the store received information from a bank that the cards used for these purchases had been reported as stolen by their rightful owners and as a result, the transactions were cancelled and the money withdrawn from the company's account.
On 05/09/2024, the same store received an online order for the purchase of a mobile phone worth 1,320 euros, while the next day, two people went to the store to pick up the phone. The employee identified one of the two as one of the persons who received the phone whose payments for their purchase had been suspended as fraudulent.
The 20-year-old informed the police, where they went to the store and arrested one suspect, aged 23, while the second managed to escape.
The 23-year-old, on 07/09/2024, was brought before the Limassol District Court, where a six-day detention order was issued against him.
The second suspect, aged 31, was arrested yesterday afternoon on a court arrest warrant and taken into custody to facilitate interrogations.
The ICF Limassol continues the examinations.
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Set for this morning (09:00) is the first appearance of Simon Mistriel Aykut before the permanent Assize Court of Nicosia in the case of usurpation of Greek Cypriot land in the occupied areas.
The 73-year-old, who was arrested on June 7 on the basis of an arrest warrant, presents himself as the founder of AFIK GROUP of companies and today will answer the charges he faces.
The prosecution will request that Aykut be held on trial until the conclusion of the trial, considering that the risk of absconding in his case is increased.
The charges he faces exceed 240 and relate to the usurpation of 60 pieces of land owned by Greek Cypriots. Among others, he is charged with fraudulent transactions in real estate, illegal possession, possession and use of land, conspiracy to defraud and money laundering, which exceed €50 million based on a land registry estimate.
As Filenews learns, the indictment includes more than 240 charges, while the prosecution witnesses exceed 100.
We recall that Aykut has already appealed a verdict of a District Judge who had decided at the beginning of the summer to be detained as an undertrial until today. However, the Appellate Judiciary had decided in July to reject his request.
Two other people are wanted in the case. They are the 73-year-old's two sons. 51-year-old Afiq Yakov and 49-year-old Michael Mistriel Aykut. Both present themselves as directors of the group. Like their father, they hold Israeli and Portuguese passports. European and international arrest warrants have been issued against them.
The construction group AFIK GROUP started implementing the "Caesar Project". The project included the Caesar Blue, Caesar Beach, Caesar Breeze, Caesar Bay, Caesar Cliff and Caesar Resort developments. All this on pieces of land in Gastria, Akanthou, Agios Amvrosios Kyrenia and Trikomo.
The usurpers advertised that they sold more than 5,000 units in Trikomo (from €50,000 and above for the purchase of each apartment) and 220 in Bogazi Famagusta, but also that the Afik group implemented or routed at least eight such projects with a total of more than 8,600 tourist units.
Fanis Makrides
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The Financial Police Directorate in Greece proceeded with the dismantling of a criminal organization. The members of this criminal organization operated by establishing non-existent businesses, through which fictitious transactions and expenditures of tens of millions of euros were carried out not only in Greece but also in Cyprus.
According to the Hellenic Police, the members of the organization, since 2019, were involved in complex procedures aimed at defrauding the State through the non-payment of VAT, proceeding to interbank transfers of funds for pretextual payment of transactions.
In order to dismantle the criminal organization, after a months-long investigation under the supervision of the Greek Office of European Delegated Prosecutors, an extensive police operation was organized and implemented last Thursday, with the assistance of police officers from the Criminal Investigation Directorate, the Attica Security Directorate and the Cybercrime Directorate, during which 21 members of the organization were arrested. including three who allegedly had a leadership role.
They were charged with criminal organization, forgery against the Greek state, cross-border VAT fraud with loss of VAT resources exceeding €10,000,000, aiding and abetting, money laundering, and violation of the law on arms and drugs. The case file also includes 41 people accused of the same offences.
It was preceded by a relevant finding by the Anti-Money Laundering Authority, while the investigation of the case revealed that the members of the criminal organization had joined it with distinct roles, having operational infrastructure for the purpose of carrying out fictitious transactions and illegally refunding VAT.
In order to achieve their goal, the main members were structured in two subgroups, which acted in a coordinated manner, having established themselves covertly in different areas in Attica, while taking the appropriate measures to avoid their disclosure (continuous establishment of new legal entities, use of virtual networks and telephone connections of "straw men"), physical money transfer, etc.).
More specifically, regarding the way the organization acts:
• Establishment of shell businesses: The members of the organization established shell companies without real commercial activity in Greece, Cyprus and Slovakia. In these companies, people of low socio-economic status, such as unemployed and dependents, were declared as managers in order to hide the identity of the real managers. Indicative of the scope of their action and infrastructure, is the fact that one of the two subgroups is allegedly linked to the establishment of at least 430 virtual entities or to a legitimate operation.
• Carousel fraud: The organisation carried out a complex "carousel fraud" scheme, taking advantage of intra-EU transactions and the VAT non-payment scheme on sales within the EU. These companies operated as "missing traders" who declared fictitious transactions in order to illegally collect VAT or request refunds.
Financial money laundering: Profits from tax evasion were trafficked through the bank accounts of shell companies, carrying out fictitious banking transactions and cash withdrawals. The perpetrators used encrypted networks (VPNs) and anonymous sim cards, while physically transferring money from peripheral members of the organization to hide the origin of the illicit proceeds.
•VAT declarations: Members of the organization submitted false or inaccurate or incomplete VAT returns and proceeded to download fictitious invoices to create fictitious VAT refund claims. Through this method, the organisation managed to illegally extort from the state an amount of more than €4.4 million from VAT refunds.
• Recruitment of regional members: Central members recruited people with low incomes and criminal backgrounds to position them as managers of shell businesses. Regional members acted as "personal tools" to cover the organisation's activities in cross-border VAT fraud, the movement of related revenues through banking and their withdrawal, and money laundering. A characteristic feature of the latter case is that those undertakings were not related to the undertakings belonging to the organisation's range of activities, whereas they themselves had different objects of business, for the purpose of declaring fictitious transactions.
At the same time, the leading members of the organization sought to avoid obvious indications of their association with shell businesses and their managers, in order to avoid legal consequences against them, as the obligation to pay output VAT was passed on to these entities, while at the same time legitimate businesses in which members participated, balanced the input-output VAT, thus depriving the State of its ability to recover lost revenue.
In total, through the corporate formations created by the members of the criminal organization, they achieved the loss of VAT resources amounting to more than €26,000,000, for which fictitious transactions of more than €150,000,000 had been declared.
In addition, one sub-group of the organization was also active outside the organization, where by the same method it proceeded through the creation of a system of companies to cross-border VAT fraud amounting to millions of euros, for the benefit of a company active in e-commerce.
Also, a key member of the organization succeeded for seven businesses he managed, the fraudulent disbursement of money through the repayable advance measure, obtaining an illegal benefit of approximately €770,000.
In order to dismantle the organization, 39 searches were carried out (in homes, businesses, vehicles, physical), in which, among other things, the following were found and confiscated:
• €139,696 and banknote counter,
• luxury private car,
• 10 wristwatches of particularly high value,
• 62 seals of legal entities,
• 46 mobile phones,
• 7 laptops and tablets,
• pistol with 2 magazines,
• numerous consignment notes, invoices, tax receipts and handwritten notes,
• bank documents, cards, cheques and chequebooks of Greek and foreign credit institutions,
• a small amount of narcotic substances,
• manifestly false identity card of foreign authorities,
• 2 POS machines and
• a large number of external hard drives and portable digital data storage media (USB STICKS), while digital evidence was exported for further investigation of their content.
It is noted that the investigation took into account a number of data derived from the collection and processing of tax, accounting and banking data (opening bank accounts of 230 entities), the analysis and correlation of numerous electronic traces, the execution of special investigative acts (removal of communications for a total of 85 telephone connections and recording of 179,450 telephone conversations), the processing and description of video material and the conduct of very voluminous correspondence (780 outgoing documents for data collection).
According to ELAS, the Criminal Investigation Directorate also made a decisive contribution to the investigation of the case, with the dispatch of 12 special digital data investigators of the Department of Digital Evidence Examination, who utilized modern forensic tools and artificial intelligence applications to discover and correlate critical evidence during field investigations, among millions of digital data stored both locally and in the cloud. The seized digital data will be further analyzed by the laboratory of the Digital Evidence Examination Department.
Also, an important factor for the successful completion of the survey was the cooperation and response of AADE Services, as well as credit institutions in the provision of data.
The arrested persons, with the case file formed against them, were taken to the Greek Office of the European Delegated Prosecutors and referred to an Investigator.
Finally, ELAS reminds that citizens may contact, anonymously or otherwise, the telephone number 11012 or the portal of the Greek State (gov.gr) "Report for financial crimes", to provide information or report illegal and reprehensible actions or activities against the sector of economy, public property, as well as social and insurance welfare and rights.
ANA-MPA
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Cyprus Mail
A 27-year-old Syrian national was sentenced on Monday to two months in prison in the north for having illegally crossed the Green Line, after the Turkish Cypriot police found he had lied about being the husband of the heavily pregnant 18-year-old mother of two with whom he had crossed.
Both the man and the woman appeared in the military court with the court finding that the man had been “lying in the hope of receiving a shorter sentence”.
The woman was sentenced to 12 days in prison, and then immediately released as she had already served the time in custody, being housed in a student dormitory as she awaited a ruling. She will now be sent onwards to Turkey with her children.
The pair and the children had been apprehended in the north in the early hours of August 25, having illegally crossed from the Republic near the Ledra Palace hotel in Nicosia.
