A mighty fine woman for an EU Commissioner to do business with
On 15 October 1998, the Cypriot newspaper Alithia reported on the case of the woman – Nina Petros – who had involved the Bishop of Limassol in a series of financial wrong-doings.
Nina Petros is Eloise Marie Corbin, the elderly woman known in Malta as Mary Swan and who is John Dalli’s client in the ‘Bahamas’ case.
Alithia reported (I quote the Cyprus Mail press review of the following day) that “a man of questionable reputation”, Andreas Antoniades a.k.a. Keravnos, was also after Nina Petros because she owed him £40,000. She had promised to pay him £80,000 to go to the Philippines and bring back gold and diamonds worth $250 million.
Funny how she’s still using the same line and getting away with it.
Antoniades had warned Petros – the newspaper reported – that if she did not pay him what he was owed he would “have some blacks seize her and make her disappear from Johannesburg”, where she was said to be staying. He alleged that Petros had links with American and Jewish mafia.
So who is this Andreas Antoniades, who ‘Nina Petros’ promised payment for smuggling gold and diamonds? He is a Greek Cypriot who worked as a customs informer on drug dealing until the 1990s, when reports emerged he was involved in drug trafficking.
Keravnos was his nom de guerre when he was a member of EOKA – the Cypriot insurgents who fought against British rule – and the nom de guerre he used for his undercover work.
When his cover was blown in Cyprus, he was given a British passport and he went to the UK. He met Dalli’s blonde friend in Cyprus in the late 1990s.
Most recently, he is known to have been living in Dubai.
According to former police officials and intelligence reports, Antoniades, now 83, was one of three leading agents for British Customs inside the gangs who have flooded Britain with billions of pounds of heroin since the early 1990s. One senior former drugs intelligence officer described the three as being, at one time, among the top five suspected heroin importers into Britain.
8 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6417069.stm
http://www.stephengrey.com/2007/03/straw-wanted-%E2%80%98drug-smuggling%E2%80%99-informant-freed/
http://www.pressmon.com/cgi-bin/press_view.cgi?id=813510
Billions of pounds, did you say? How much did Dalli say his new venture’s worth?
Chrysanthos’ experience should ring Dalli’s alarm bells, assuming he’s got any left.
Violation fraud and broker-dealer registration violation charges were filed against Chrysanthos and his US lawyer, Lewis Rivlin, by the US Security and Exchange Commission through the Washington DC District Court.
In Cyprus, Chrysanthos was charged on three counts: conspiracy to defraud, attempting to obtain money under false pretences and attempted fraud.
FORMER Limassol Bishop Chrysanthos was officially charged with attempting to defraud a UK-based investor of $3.7 million, police said yesterday.
The SEC’s legal action filed through the Washington DC District Court claims that Rivlin defrauded investors of $6.2 million in a bank scam between December 1997 and June 1998.
Rivlin is accused of selling at least $6.2 million worth of securities in a bogus trading programme to at least four groups of investors.
Including an Ecuadorian charity for underprivileged girls.
“The scheme involved the pooling of investors funds to purchase and resell deeply discounted bank instruments at a profit, under the auspices of Chrysanthos Chrysostomou, formerly the Metropolitan of Limassol,” said the press statement from the New York-based SEC.
Is the US embassy looking into this?
http://www.stephengrey.com/2007/03/straw-wanted-‘drug-smuggling’-informant-freed/
Let us not forget the connection to the Bangkok incident, when this woman used a false passport, was arrested, and then bailed out by the Thai director in Dalli’s client company, Tyre Ltd.
I think it obvious that the Thai connection is to poppies.
OK, so what happens if the US requests her extradition?
Joseph caught between John Dalli and the US ambassador.
She’s probably gone, already, as one would at the first sign of trouble.