2023-09-03 19:54:17
Franco-Israeli diamond tycoon Beny Steinmetz has been arrested in Cyprus on a Romanian arrest warrant for an unserved sentence, his spokesman said in a statement on Sunday. A Cypriot police spokesman has confirmed the arrest of an Israeli at Larnaca airport under a Europol arrest warrant issued by Romania. He appeared in a Larnaca court on Friday for an extradition hearing which is due to continue on September 8.
The 67-year-old billionaire was sentenced in absentia in 2020 to five years in prison by Bucharest for having orchestrated the creation of an “organized criminal group”, within the framework of land transactions carried out between 2006 and 2008. These transactions would have caused damage of approximately 135 million euros to Romania. According to a press release from his spokesperson, Beny Steinmetz was “temporarily detained by the Cypriot authorities upon his arrival at Larnaca airport under a European arrest warrant issued by the Romanian authorities”.
A previous arrest in Greece
He is being held in a police station, the Cypriot authorities having to decide what to do with the case, the spokesman told AFP. The statement points out that a Greek court had already rejected a similar extradition request from Romania in 2022. The businessman had been temporarily detained in Athens before being released. “Steinmetz welcomes the opportunity to be cleared in another European country from Romania, a country notorious for its human rights abuses,” the statement said.
“He is also convinced that justice will prevail in Cyprus,” he said. In another case, Beny Steinmetz was sentenced on appeal last April to three years in prison – including 18 months – by a Swiss court, in connection with mining rights in Guinea. His team had declared that they wanted to challenge this judgment before the highest court in Switzerland.
At first instance, the billionaire had been sentenced in early 2021 to five years in prison for “corruption of public officials”. News of his arrest comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected in Cyprus to attend a trilateral summit with the Cypriot president and Greek prime minister, scheduled for Monday.
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