The Cypriot billionaire’s investigation is the case John Kiriakou uses to illustrate the operational side of private intelligence, as opposed to the analytic side.[1][2]
A Cypriot billionaire telephoned him. He had one daughter, who would inherit everything, and she was engaged to a Greek Cypriot man living in London whom he did not like and did not want anywhere near his money or his daughter. He wanted to know as much about him as possible. Kiriakou asked what his budget was and was given a number.[1][3]
The work
He flew to Cyprus and bribed a police captain for the secret police files. He flew to London and ran surveillance on the man’s building. It took about six weeks of full-time work.[3]
What he reported back was that the fiancé was stealing from the daughter; that he had used her money to buy a warehouse in London with an Armenian and a Turkish partner, which was losing money and which he had told her was for something else; that he was trying to buy a mansion in London in the expectation of marrying into the fortune; and that he had multiple drug arrests — caught smuggling drugs from Israel into Cyprus, and never prosecuted because a judge had been paid off, with the British authorities believing he was smuggling there too. Kiriakou supported the warehouse finding with satellite pictures from Google Earth.[4][5][6]
The old man went to his daughter and told her she was being scammed.[6]
Put to him that the story makes him sound like a high-speed private investigator, Kiriakou agrees: “that’s really what it comes down to.”[7]