Predator Greece: Another document released today by Inside Storyshows Felix Bitzios' relationship with Intellexa and how he still controls 35% of the company.
On September 22, 2022, the inside story in a report titled “Predatorgate: The second shareholder of Intellexa AEPredatorgate: The second shareholder of Intellexa AE”, revealed that businessman Felix Bitzios had been a shareholder in Intellexa, the company founded by Israeli Tal Dilian and marketing the Predator spyware, since May 2020. Through a Cypriot company affiliated with him, Santinomo Limited – which he had founded in September 2019 – Bitzios acquired 35% of the Greek limited liability company Intellexa AE in May 2020, a few months after its establishment in Greece.
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Santinomo Limited is – according to our previous reports – a key company in the case of the illegal surveillance of journalist Thanasis Koukakis with the Predator spyware and the targeting of Greek politicians, as it helped relocate Tal Dillian's companies to Greece after his "expulsion" from Cyprus, due to the uproar that erupted over the so-called "spy van", which he himself advertised in a video for Forbes magazine.
In a delayed posting to the Cyprus Registrar of Companies, published on August 4, 2022 (one day before it became known that the current president of PASOK, Nikos Androulakis, in addition to being targeted with Predator, was also in the crosshairs of the Cyprus Anti-Corruption Commission), the secretary of Santinomo Limited, the also Cypriot company of accountant Elias Kyriakides Finsol Enterprises, confirms that the 1,000 shares of the company Santinomo Limited have been transferred from Felix Bitzios to Thalestris Limited, the parent company of Intellexa SA, and in fact 18 months ago, on December 18, 2020. That is, Felix Bitzios appears to be selling the Cypriot Santinomo Limited to the Irish Thalestris on December 18, 2020 and this is declared 18 months later to the Cyprus Registrar of Companies. Thalestris Limited, owned by Tal Dillian (one of the co-founders of Intellexa), is the parent company of several subsidiaries established in Greece, Cyprus, Switzerland, Ireland and the British Virgin Islands.
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However, on December 31, 2020, 13 days after the transaction, the Cypriot company Santinomo Limited of Felix Bigziou does not appear on the list of Thalestris subsidiaries - and the parent company's stake in the Greek Intellexa AE remained at 65%.
Documents released today by Inside Story show that Felix Bigzios is still behind Santinomo Limited (directly owning 100% of its shares) and therefore through it still controls 35% of Intellexa AE. Based on this new finding, the conclusion is drawn that one of the two documents posted at the Cyprus Registrar of Companies does not tell the truth, as both conditions cannot apply simultaneously, namely that Bigzios has sold the company Santinomo Limited to Thalestris since December 2020 and that he appears until a few days ago (28/09/2022) as the real beneficiary of 100% of Santinomo Limited, which in turn, according to the latest available documents, owns 35% of Intellexa AE.
Someone is lying
The European Union forced Cyprus – and Greece, which has not implemented itThe list of large debtors and the register of beneficial owners remains dark– to create a file with the beneficial owners in each company (Ultimate Beneficiary Owner-UBO), something that Cyprus began operating in March 2021Start of operation of the register of beneficial owners of companies and other legal entities | Companies Sector – Republic of Cyprus. So in an unsuspected time, sometime between March 2021, when the implementation of the measure began, and September 28, 2022, someone in charge went to the file of the Registrar of Companies on behalf of Santinomo Limited and registered Felix Biggio as the “ultimate beneficiary” of the company. In any case, this happened after the transfer of Biggio’s shares, which allegedly took place on December 18, 2020, as the file . Companies that have not declared an ultimate beneficial owner display the relevant field blank. Therefore, either the declaration of the ultimate beneficial owner of Santinomo Limited is false, or the ex post statement of August 4, 2022 regarding the transfer of shares. “Both cannot be true,” sources from three law firms, two in Cyprus and one in Athens, told Inside Story.
To put it even more simply: on December 18 (according to a document posted very late, on August 4, 2022), Felix Bigzios transfers ownership of Santinomo Limited to Thalestris. At some point later in the transaction, more specifically from March 16, 2021 onwards, the date on which companies could start registering their beneficial owners in the Cyprus UBO register, someone declares Felix Bigzios in that register as the beneficial owner of the company Santinomo Limited.
Flushing prevention
The enforcement of European legislation on the ultimate beneficial owner in Cyprus was deemed necessaryDecision of the Council of Ministers-Registrar of Companies Competent Authority for the Registry of Beneficial Owners of companies and other legal entities because: "In the context of the transposition into national law of the 4th European Directive (EU 2015/849SUMMARY OF: Directive (EU) 2015/849 — prevention of the use of the financial system for the purposes of money laundering or terrorist financing) of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 May 2015, which concerns the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, article 61A(4)(a) of the "Prevention and Combating of Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Laws of 2007 to 2019" provides for the observance of central register of beneficial owners of companies and other legal entities (N13(I)/2018)".
Cyprus, along with Greece, Romania, the Czech Republic, Spain and Finland, were among the countries that had not implemented European legislation on the ultimate beneficial owner record in 2021, according to data from Transparency International EU. In the spring of 2022, Greece had a type of UBO register in Europe | Blockint, but it was not accessible to everyone, while the Cypriot record was open only to professionals who perform legal and financial audits.
When Cyprus decided to enforce the European legislation on the register of beneficial owners, it implemented a solution that it describes as “interim”: it gave companies successive deadlines to declare their ultimate beneficiaries, the last of which was on July 31, 2022. Since then, what applies to new companies that are established or old ones that change their ultimate beneficiary is the 14-day deadline to declare it. However, Cyprus does not yet impose fines on those who neglect to do so. Regardless, the vast majority of companies have adapted and have declared their ultimate beneficiaries.
In relation to the company Santinomo Limited, the deadline for declaring the ultimate beneficial owner has passed, as it reportedly changed hands on December 18, 2020. However, Felix Bigzios still appears as the ultimate beneficial owner. The fact that this is not reflected may be a blunder or even a deliberate act.
Dissatisfaction and opacity
However, the delayed declaration of share transfer by Santinomo Limited, which owns 35% of Intellexa AE, seems not to have been favorably received within the Tal Dillian group, as problems are being created both in the Irish company, which, based on the 2020 accounting statements (published in mid-November 2021), appears to be a 65% owner of Dillian's Greek company (instead of 100%, if the statement of 4.8.2022 according to which Thalestris is a 100% shareholder of the Greek Intellexa through Santinomo Limited is valid), while the change of shareholders should logically be accompanied by a change of secretaries and directors.
Legal sources in Nicosia and Limassol clarified yesterday, speaking to Inside Story, that "the prosecutors responsible for investigating the wiretapping should deal with whether the contradictory statements of the last two months are related to the truth, as the Registrar of Companies records the statements of shareholders, directors and secretaries of companies without the Registrar being able to examine whether they correspond to reality.".
The clarification of the real (direct or indirect) role of Felix Bitzios in Intellexa SA, in addition to restoring the truth, is important for at least one additional reason: Because as emerges from new revealing evidence that came to light yesterday G. Lavranos behind KRIKEL – How the Parliament was attempted to be deceived [Revealing documents] | tvxs.gr, this businessman, together with his close associate Yiannis Lavranos, were involved in management issues of the company Krikel, which since 2018 has emerged as a preferred official supplier of the Ministry of Citizen Protection. Since then, the ministry and Krikel have signed seven contracts, six of which were classified as confidential, while according to information from inside story, this company is also connected (by a subcontract) to the legal interception system that EYP purchased in 2021 from the Italian RCS Lab. Also, as revealed by Koukakis to Androulakis: New twist in the Predator spyware case , Felix Bitzios, through another Cypriot company owned by him (Viniato Limited), had undertaken to provide consulting services to Krikel between January and August 2018, for a fee.
It is recalled that at the end of August, on the occasion of the joint publication of a report by Nikolas Leontopoulos and Thodoris Chondrogiannos entitled "Maximou's Partition with the Predator"Maximou's Partition with the Predator | Reporters United, the two journalists personally, Reporters United and the Editors' Newspaper received a fourth citation for EfSyn and Reporters United for the investigation of the wiretapping – this time by Felix Biggio | Reporters United by Felix Biggio, who, among other things, rejects the characterization of him as a "key person" attributed to him by the report's authors, pointing out, among other things, that his role in Intellexa (and other related companies) was simply that of alternate managing director and that he is not connected in any way whatsoever with these companies "as of June 30, 2021."
Inside Story sent specific written questions via email to Felix Biggio, asking him to explain the reason for the discrepancy we identified in the documents posted to the Cyprus Registrar for the company Santinomo Limited. We asked the representatives of the Irish Thalestris to inform us whether the company Santinomo Limited belongs to the Thalestris group of companies and when the transfer took place. As of the publication of this article, we have not received any response.
