Galery

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The inspection made it clear that, in this way, Palis and his associates managed to create a combination which caused losses to the telecom amounting to 4,000,000 euro, as well as to thousands of subscribers for calls to erotic phones which they have never made. A "malware" lies at the centre of all this, which is installed via the Internet on users' computers and makes calls to erotic phones, without subscribers themselves suspecting anything. Δialer - i.e. the program that makes phone calls without the user's knowledge, makes international calls to random premium-rate telephone numbers. This is repeated continuously while the customer is online, and every time he or she tries to connect to the network.

In order to initiate traffic and therefore charging, someone has to answer the call, of course. This is done through special modems that are available in certain areas. The affair was revealed when Sao Tome and Principe's official supplier, CST, intervened with an official letter informing OTEGLOBE that the country's phone codes are +239 2ΧΧΧ and +239 9ΧΧΧ, and not +239 5ΧΧΧ, which is used by the company of Palis.

Another interesting fact is that, although CST informed OTEGLOBE about that, the company Ronda continued its activities until September 2005, when CST was forced to appeal to the International Telecommunication Union that OTEGLOBE, via Palis's company, uses illegally the prefix +239 5ΧΧΧ. Of course, the appeal was uploaded on the Internet as well, and, as a result, the state telecommunications company was accused of abuse of national resources of a foreign country. "Thus, Anastasios Palis and his associates managed to gain a profit of 3,585,898 euro, and asked OTEGLOBE to send them 1,137,914 euro more," ended the report of the Office for Combating Economic Crimes. Afterwards, the baton was taken by the telecom's then CEO, Panagiotis Vourloumis, who appealed against Palis and in this way began unravelling the case, which has been left at the stage of investigation so far.

The main person involved in this case, who is directly accused by Vourloumis, is Anastasios Palis. His versatile work is worthy of wonder - a professional soldier with five years of service in aviation, he became a museum director, then dealt with shipping and publishing, and owns 40% of the shares of Proto Thema Newspaper. He has also been an economic adviser to the Vatopedi Monastery on Mount Athos, maintaining friendly relations with Abbot Ephraim. Then, he appeared on Crete as a shareholder of the British company Loyalward, which is associated with the case of the Monastery Toplou, and tried to transfer an area of 25,913 acres to the English company via the Mother of God Akrotiriani Foundation. This terrain includes the palm forest in Vai and archaeological sites. After Crete, he visited Africa, from where he returned to Greece as "the second official telecommunications provider" for the state of Sao Tome and Principe. He also somehow created the cultural and historical PALIS Foundation and Museum, which aimed at the popularisation of Greece's cultural heritage. The site of the museum shows that its founder maintains good relations with politicians such as Karolos Papoulias and Dimitris Avramopoulos. Recently, he has become close friends with Minister of Public Order Nikos Dendias. Palis's name was involved in other legal cases as well, for example "The Real Estate Mafia" scandal.