Company records show that Israeli businessman Tal Dilian and Avraham Shahak Avni both held roles in the same Cyprus-registered company, Poltrex, even though Dilian said on Monday that he was being linked with Avni arbitrarily. Both men became widely known in Cyprus through the ‘black van’ surveillance case.
In an exclusive statement to Alpha Cyprus, Dilian said he knew Avni, but described him as “a different person, who operated through separate companies and business activities”.
Phileleftheros was unable to reach Dilian for further comment on Wednesday.
Documents filed with the Registrar of Companies, first reported by the newspaper in August 2022, show that Poltrex was founded on 3 October 2018. From 10 June 2019, its sole shareholder, with 1,000 shares, was Intellexa Limited, a company linked to Dilian.
On 1 September 2019, Avni, who had worked with the then governing DISY party and Cyprus police, became Poltrex’s director and secretary.
Poltrex was renamed Alchemycorp Ltd on 16 October 2019. Dilian and Avni remained involved in its ownership and management respectively until 24 February 2020. In December 2019, Cypriot authorities issued arrest warrants for both men over the van case. The warrants were later cancelled after their lawyer took legal action.
On 24 February 2020, while both men were wanted, Yaron Levgoren, a permanent resident of Canada, took over as the company’s shareholder and one of its officers. The company’s registered office stayed the same: the Novel Tower building in Larnaca. The building housed both Avni’s company NCIS and Dilian’s WiSpear, and was the focus of police investigations into the van case in November 2019.
According to police investigations and evidence presented to a district court, the two businessmen shared equipment and staff in the building, and the surveillance van, which belonged to Dilian’s WiSpear, was parked in the basement of Avni’s NCIS Intelligence and Security Systems Ltd.
Levgoren, who took over the company, is an officer of Cytrox Holdings Zrt, according to Hungary’s national company register. Skopje-based Cytrox is alleged to have developed the Predator spyware.
In March 2024, an official note accompanying US sanctions on companies and individuals described Dilian as the founder of the Intellexa Group. The note said the group was directly linked to the Intellexa-named companies, Cytrox Holdings Zrt and Cytrox AD, and presented Dilian as controlling them partly or fully.
Phileleftheros had contacted a representative of Dilian and Avni in August 2022 for comment on their links to the company.
