Dubai financier behind €800,000 car bomb assassination plot in Limassol

Police relayed to the Nicosia district court on Wednesday that an alleged €800,000 contract to assassinate former convict Giorgos Xiourouppas in his car in Limassol was financed from the United Arab Emirates. Four men aged 48, 32, 36 and 70 are being investigated for conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit a felony, illegal possession and transport of explosives, participation in a criminal syndicate and money laundering. Police say the contract was funded by a wealthy Emirati financier, believed to be residing in Dubai, who was once a close associate of Xiourouppas, though the friendship ended over a financial dispute. He allegedly agreed to pay €400,000 in advance and €400,000 once Xiourouppas had been killed. He is one of two wanted men abroad, and European and international arrest warrants are in force. Officers received information last month, for at about 1.15am a Nicosia CID officer told his Limassol counterpart that a device was about to be placed in Xiourouppas’s car. Police subsequently found him at home, where he said he had received no threats, and searches of his vehicles found nothing suspicious. He was then moved to a hotel out of town with his wife and used a different car. The court heard that the 36-year-old, a Bulgarian national, had worked at a nightclub run by Xiourouppas. When it closed for the summer, Xiourouppas allegedly sent him to work for the first wanted man, who later asked him for help in exchange for money. During a video call from Dubai, also attended by the second wanted man, he was allegedly told to collect a device on the evening of 12 September, place it in the vehicle and detonate it remotely. Police say he was chosen as he was aware of Xiourouppas’s routine and which of his cars he would be driving. He was deported on September 14, and how he returned to Cyprus is under investigation. The 48-year-old is alleged to have arranged the attack and handed it to another man for a fee. A young man who accepted the job confided in the 70-year-old, a friend of Xiourouppas from the central prisons. Police say he destroyed the detonator of the device, which weighed about 820 grams, and phoned Xiourouppas on 14 September to warn him. Xiourouppas asked the 48-year-old to explain and was told the explosives were intended for two other Limassol businessmen; he reportedly pretended to accept this. The 32-year-old is also alleged to have helped deliver the device. In a statement on November 6, Xiourouppas said he had mediated in July over the repayment of a debt of 2,469,500 USDT, a cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar. He said he received no reply when he later sought the commission promised to him. Investigators are examining whether the dispute relates to the plot. Police have taken 23 statements thus far and will now examine CCTV footage and mobile phone data. Another individual is sought over the alleged transfer of a second detonator. Xiourouppas, heralding from Aradippou, was jailed for 20 years in November 2016 after admitting voluntary manslaughter over the killing of Panayiotis Christodoulou, 38, in a Larnaca bar the previous April. Prosecutors had first charged him with premeditated murder, which carries mandatory life imprisonment, before downgrading the charge. The Larnaca criminal court heard he shot Christodoulou 13 times after the victim accused him of informing police about a drugs arrest. Xiourouppas was released on conditions in 2024, only eight years after his arrest, on the decision of the conditional release board.