![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/04072018-2.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\nKhalil Emporium<\/h2>\n\n\n
But \r\nthe revelation that Pappas's trip to Margarita had been made with Artemiou and \r\naboard a plane of Khalil, gave a new dimension to the matter. The main \r\nopposition party, the social democratic New Democracy, resumed its requests to \r\nopen a parliamentary investigation into the matter and for Pappas and Prime \r\nMinister Tsipras to appear to provide explanations to the \r\ncongressmen.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
Majed \r\nKhalil, together with his older brother, Khaled, have built an industrial and \r\ncommercial emporium in Venezuela in the shadow of the Bolivarian regime \r\nestablished since 1999 in the country. They are considered close to Chavism<\/I>, in particular to the god of \r\ntheir leaders, Diosdado Cabello Rond\u00f3n, current president of the National \r\nConstituent Assembly, and Jorge Rodr\u00edguez G\u00f3mez, minister of Information and \r\nCommunication.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
At \r\nleast one of them, Majed, was stripped of his US visa in 2004 on suspicion of \r\nmoney laundering, according to the Miami Herald newspaper. The sanction was \r\nimposed despite the fact that, by then, one of Khalil\u2019s company, Hardwell \r\nComputer Inc, represented Raytheon in Venezuela. That was an American company \r\nfor which he had obtained the juicy contract to replace the radar system of the \r\nSim\u00f3n Bol\u00edvar International Airport in Maiquet\u00eda, at the service of the city of \r\nCaracas.<\/p>\n\n\n \"Illegal Acquisition of Foreign Currency\"<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n The \r\ngroup of the Khalil brothers includes from technological to food, tourism or \r\nurban cleaning companies. It has companies in Panama and, as evidenced in the \r\nfiles of the Mossack Fonseca law firm - the leakage of which gave rise to the \r\nso-called Panama Papers -, at least until 2006, it paid the maintenance fees of \r\ntwo companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, Henvale Holdings Ltd and \r\nVadin Services S.A., from a Majed Khalil account in the Premier Bank \r\nInternational of Cura\u00e7ao.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n In \r\n2014, the General Prosecutor\u2019s Office opened investigations into allegations of \r\nforeign exchange crimes against seven companies that included Majed Khalil as \r\nshareholder: Hardwell Computer Inc, Corporaci\u00f3n Meditech, KM Logistic, Santa \r\nM\u00f3nica Cotton Trading Company, Qualcomm Telesistemas, Cobijas Josdo, Pacific Rim \r\nEnergy, Importadora DYFCA, Grupo DJML, Importadora Paquito, Administradora \r\nServimeta, and Productos Pisc\u00edcolas Propisca. Almost simultaneously, the Public \r\nProsecutor also opened investigations for alleged \"illegal acquisition of \r\nforeign currency\" against Yatritonic C.A., a company of Khaled Khalil. Already \r\nin 2012, the office of the then Prosecutor Luisa Ortega D\u00edaz had made inquiries \r\nabout another family business, Hornos El\u00e9ctricos de Venezuela S.A. (Hevensa). In \r\nno case did the proceedings find indications of crimes.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n Another \r\nof the Khalils\u2019 connections reported by the Greek newspaper became evident in \r\nNovember 2015. At that time, members of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) \r\narrested during a black operation in Haiti two nephews of the First Venezuelan \r\nLady, Cilia Flores, who were trying to complete in that Caribbean nation the \r\nsale of a cocaine shipment. Franqui Francisco Flores and Efra\u00edn Campos ?who \r\nwould be sentenced to 18-year imprisonment by a New York court?, were traveling \r\non a plane of the Venezuelan garbage collection company Sabenpe, the board of \r\ndirectors of which includes Khaled Khalil Maizoub, as alternate \r\ndirector.<\/p>\n\n\n Cypriot \r\nlawyer Artemis Artemiou - one of the travelers to Margarita and a visitor at the \r\noffice of the Greek prime minister - was exposed to public scrutiny in April \r\n2016, when his name appeared on the so-called Panama Papers. The portal \r\nProtagon.gr identified three companies registered in the tax haven of the \r\nBritish Virgin Islands, based in Cyprus, which Artemiou was linked to, \r\napparently, only as an intermediary through his law firm, Artemiou, Pieri & \r\nAssociates: Pizzazz Limited, Avgi, and Elazzoulian Limited. The companies were \r\nmanaged on behalf of third parties that \"are not Politically Exposed Persons \r\n(PEP) neither in Cyprus nor in Greece,\" Artemiou assured in a written statement, \r\nin which he also said that the publication was an attempt to \"link my \r\nprofessional activities with the political events in Greece.\" He minimized the \r\nclaims saying that he only had connection with three out of the 7,000 Cypriot \r\ncompanies that appeared on the Panama Papers. However, \r\na new set of almost 1.3 million documents leaked from the now defunct Panamanian \r\nlaw firm, Mossack Fonseca, received by the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung newspaper of \r\nMunich, Germany, and processed and coordinated by the International Consortium \r\nof Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) as the Panama Papers 2 project, provides a \r\nnew and more comprehensive perspective about the link of the Cypriot lawyer with \r\nthe companies.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n As \r\nreported from Athens by reporter Harry Karanikas, of the Protagon.gr \r\nsite, documents included in the new filtration allow to determine that in 2017, \r\nArtemiou was still the End Beneficiary and not only the intermediary or \r\nadministrator of two of the companies that appear on the Panama Papers. Why did \r\nhe lie in his last statement, where he insisted that these companies had been \r\nincorporated on behalf of third parties?<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n The \r\nfiles also reveal that in April 2017, Artemiou had asked Mossack Fonseca, the \r\nPanamanian law firm, to dissolve one of those companies, Pizzazz Limited, just \r\nat the same time that Greece learned about the trip of the lawyer and the future \r\nminister, Nikos Pappas, in an airplane of the Lebanon-Venezuelan entrepreneur, \r\nMajed Khalil.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n Furthermore, \r\nArtemiou reports in a communication that he had offered consulting services \r\nthrough Pizzazz Limited, including, among others, a market study for a \r\nfertilizer business.<\/p>\n\n\n As \r\na source assured to Armando.info, at least one of the Khalil group\u2019s company, \r\nDistribuidora Agromar, trades agricultural materials, like \r\nfertilizers. <\/p>\n\n\n (*) \r\nThis report was made in the framework of Panama Papers 2, a series produced from \r\na leak of documents obtained by the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung newspaper of Munich, and \r\nco-sponsored by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) \r\nof Washington with reports from Athens by Harry Karanikas, \r\nProtagon.gr<\/EM><\/p>\n\n\r\n\n <\/p>\n\nCover-Up in Cyprus<\/h2>\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/04072018-1.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/armando.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/04072018-3.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n
As indications emerge, it is clear that there is still much \r\nto understand about the strange relationship between a Cypriot lawyer who \r\nstructures offshore business, high-level authorities of the Greek government, \r\nand a Venezuelan entrepreneur who offers rides through the \r\noceans.<\/p>\n\n\r\n\n
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