Larnaca businessman remanded over €12m property fraud claims

Local CrimeLarnacapoliceTop News Larnaca businessman remanded over €12m property fraud claims 756832761 1038732815226451 298488275327377121 N Relevant News Larnaca businessman remanded over €12m property fraud claims 29 July 2026 Large fire breaks out in Paphos farmland, firefighters battling strong winds 29 July 2026 Half of businesses breach new tax rules, inspections find 29 July 2026 Natasa Christoforou 29 July 2026 FacebookXWhatsAppEmailPrintViber Larnaca District Court remanded Larnaca property businessman Savvas Kakos, 62, for four days on Tuesday. Police are investigating 11 separate complaints against him alleging fraud, forgery and money laundering totalling 12 million euros. The alleged offences took place between 2022 and 2024 and span conspiracy to commit a felony, obtaining money by false pretences, forgery and circulating a forged document, fraudulent dealing in property belonging to another, fraud in the sale of property, defrauding creditors, false accounts, and laundering proceeds of crime. The offences carry sentences of up to 14 years in prison. The complaints A foreign businessman convicted of a 13.5 million euro fraud in Germany filed the first complaint in August 2024, after extradition proceedings against him from Cyprus began. He claimed he had agreed with Kakos to invest, in the form of loans, in Kakos’s companies, which would then buy property, with payments made in cryptocurrency to Kakos’s wallets. He said he recruited new investors in Israel, prompting the creation of a new company. A lawyer, who manages that company, is the second complainant in the case. For one hotel and three building complexes, he said he paid Kakos seven million euros in cryptocurrency. He said the lawyer told him Kakos was either failing to register the sale contracts of Israeli apartment buyers or registering contracts against different properties, then withdrawing them from the Land Registry using forged signatures. The lawyer filed the second complaint with Larnaca CID in August 2024. She was acting for ten buyers in Israel who had paid money towards properties. One of those buyers separately complained in January 2025 that 92,000 euros had been taken from him. Police said a Land Registry investigation uncovered eight forged sale-document receipts. An Israeli hotel owner in Larnaca filed the third and fourth complaints. In the third, filed on November 5, 2024, he said he had lent Kakos two million euros, which was not repaid. He had put up a property as collateral for the loan, which he claimed was withdrawn from the Land Registry using a forged power of attorney. The fourth complaint concerned a separate agreement to buy 60 per cent of the shares in a luxury hotel for five million euros. Financial disputes between the two arose in March 2025, after which he complained to police. A couple living in France filed the fifth complaint in November 2024, stating they had agreed to buy an apartment in Tersefanou for 119,500 euros. They paid a 32,000 euro deposit, but police found no sale document had been registered at the Land Registry. An Israeli businessman filed the sixth complaint, stating he had agreed with a Kakos company on a joint three million euro investment to buy apartments in Tersefanou. He claimed Kakos presented him with receipts showing two million euros paid, but police found 1.5 million euros of those receipts were forged. A British couple filed the seventh complaint in July 2025 over a property they bought from Kakos for 198,200 euros. They had stayed there periodically between 2007 and 2025 and said they discovered last year that the property had been put up for auction by KEDIPES, the state asset management company, after the sale contract was allegedly withdrawn from the Larnaca Land Registry using forged signatures. An Israeli man filed the eighth complaint in December 2025, stating he had agreed to buy two properties from Kakos for 250,000 euros. The apartments were never delivered, and police investigations reportedly found a forged Land Registry receipt had been sent to him. A Lebanese resident of Cyprus filed the ninth complaint in February 2026 over an apartment he bought from a Kakos company in Aradippou for 227,924 euros. Police said their investigation found the selling company had never owned the property. The Israeli hotel owner from the third and fourth complaints filed a tenth complaint, also in February 2026, stating he had transferred 12 million euros to a Kakos company in 2022 for joint investments. He claimed Kakos presented him with a sale agreement for a property worth 800,000 euros that belonged to someone else. That property’s owner separately complained to police that his signature had been forged. An Israeli pensioner and her son filed the eleventh complaint in July 2026, stating they had bought an apartment for 165,240 euros from a company where Kakos was a director. They said Kakos later suggested cancelling the original agreement and signing a new one, but instead allegedly sent them a letter withdrawing a sale contract for a different property. The arrest During his arrest, Kakos reportedly told police he was in settlement negotiations over the first complaint and denied owning any cryptocurrency wallets. On the ninth complaint, he maintained he had not yet handed over the apartment because of a pending legal case against a Lebanese company he claims defrauded him. On the eleventh complaint, he said he had already agreed with the complainants to hand over a different apartment. The lawyer’s objection His lawyer, Antonis Dimitriou, did not object to the remand but told the court his client has had legal proceedings pending for some time in relation to the cases against him. He told the case’s investigating officer, Angeliki Dagli, that police should have been aware of the suspect’s lawsuits, and questioned why the arrest was made now. Police said they intend to question members of the suspect’s family who are shareholders in his companies. Other proceedings Separately, Kakos is a prosecution witness, rather than a defendant, in two ongoing citizenship cases. One concerns the granting of a Cypriot passport to an Iranian national through the law firm Charis Kyriakidis LLC. The other concerns a number of naturalisations, with former Transport Minister Marios Dimitriadis among the ten defendants. Subscribe to our Newsletter Latest News Large fire breaks out in Paphos farmland, firefighters battling strong winds Half of businesses breach new tax rules, inspections find Cross-party backing for Cyprus’s apartheid state Cyprus hunting season kicks off August 23 under new digital rules Christodoulides welcomes Guterres’s effort to restart Cyprus talks Guterres commits to fresh five-plus-one meeting after Cyprus visit Overnight pharmacies on Wednesday, July 29 Follow en.philenews on Google News and be the first to know all the news about Cyprus and the world.