A registered lobbyist for a Greek construction-turned-energy player has appeared beside U.S. Ambassador Kimberly Guilfoyle so often that foreign officials mistook him for staff, drawing sharp questions about whose interests are in the room.
Christos Marafatsos has shown up at so many of the U.S. ambassador to Greece’s high-level meetings that some foreign officials assumed he was her chief of staff. He is not a diplomat. He is not embassy staff. He is a private businessman and a registered lobbyist for Aktor Group, the same Greek company Guilfoyle has repeatedly promoted while urging Europe to drop Russian energy and buy American liquefied natural gas.
The Daily Mail detailed how the 39-year-old Maryland-raised operator became a near-constant figure at Guilfoyle’s side as she crisscrossed the Balkans pitching a “vertical gas corridor”, U.S. LNG into Greece, then north toward Ukraine and neighboring states. The reporting, which draws heavily on Wall Street Journal findings and federal lobbying records, puts hard numbers and named scenes on an arrangement that has left officials puzzled and critics openly uneasy.
Guilfoyle, 57, is a former Fox News personality, a longtime Trump political ally, and the former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. After President Donald Trump returned to the White House, he named her ambassador to Greece. She arrived in Athens last fall. Within days, federal records show, Marafatsos registered to lobby for Aktor.
Aktor paid Marafatsos $160,000 through June to help “establish connections” with the Executive Office of the President, the State Department, and the Energy Department. He later added three other Greece-linked businesses to his roster and reported more than $440,000 in U.S. lobbying income over nine months.
That is not a volunteer’s résumé. It is a paid brief aimed at the same Washington offices that set energy and diplomatic policy, timed to the start of Guilfoyle’s posting.
Marafatsos had already moved in Trump-world circles. He chaired Greek Voices for Trump, helped prepare Guilfoyle for her Senate confirmation, and attended her swearing-in. He posed at Mar-a-Lago during a CPAC Investors Summit in November 2024, hosted a crypto discussion at CPAC in February 2025, and was photographed sitting down with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in September 2025. At a White House Greek Independence Day event, Trump singled him out with a blunt aside: “Good looking guy, he is.”
People who have attended meetings say Guilfoyle routinely introduces him with little more than, “This is Christos.” Several described him as ubiquitous. Some said she directed follow-ups to him. Attendees also said he did not always disclose his Aktor relationship in the room.
This spring, Guilfoyle led a mission to Bulgaria. A U.S. Embassy official said she went “to advance American interests: increasing sales of US LNG to European partners and decreasing European dependence on Russian gas,” and that she remained in “full compliance with State Department guidance.”
The same trip is where the private-interest questions get concrete. Guilfoyle told people on the mission that the Bulgarian government should work with Aktor. Marafatsos sat alongside her in an audience with Bulgaria’s president. The Wall Street Journal reported that Aktor’s CEO flew her into the country on a private jet.
Aktor is a Greek construction giant and a relative newcomer to gas. It joined forces with DEPA, the Greek state-backed energy company, in a venture called Atlantic-SEE LNG. That joint venture has struck agreements or memorandums with companies across Bulgaria, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Romania. Guilfoyle has also been tied in the reporting to a proposed $6 billion arrangement in Albania that would run gas purchases through the company until 2050 if completed.
One person familiar with the discussions put the diplomatic weight in plain language.
One person familiar with the talks said:
"There is no doubt that this is kind of an official position of the U.S. government."
That is exactly why the company on the receiving end of the praise matters.
Robin Brooks, a 21-year Foreign Service veteran who served as National Security Council director for the Balkans and Central Europe under President Joe Biden, did not hold back about an American ambassador boosting a foreign firm.
Brooks said:
"absolutely problematic."
On bringing a registered lobbyist into meetings with foreign officials, Brooks added that it "calls into question whether the meeting is advancing American interests or advancing some sort of private interest."
Those are serious charges from a career diplomat, and they come from a Biden-era Balkans hand, not a Trump appointee. The Trump administration’s stated goal in the region is straightforward and popular on the right: sell American gas, shrink Moscow’s leverage, and lock in commercial ties that outlast the next European election. The open question is whether a paid Aktor lobbyist at the ambassador’s elbow helps that mission or clouds it.
Earlier this month, at an international energy conference in Thessaloniki, a Journal reporter watched Guilfoyle and Marafatsos arrive together in the back of a black BMW leading a U.S. convoy. Marafatsos then slipped into the hotel through another entrance. He stood beside her as she prepared to address officials from nine countries. Before she took the stage, she handed him her phone.
Her lawyer, Jesse Binnall, said the phone handoff happened because her dress had no pockets. Binnall also said Guilfoyle has worked with companies across the energy industry and has not focused exclusively on Aktor, and that official meetings are arranged through embassy channels rather than through Marafatsos.
Aktor’s lawyers rejected claims that Guilfoyle improperly promoted the company. They said the firm’s involvement in the vertical corridor began before “any contacts” with the ambassador.
Marafatsos himself cast the work as patriotic commerce.
Christos Marafatsos said he is:
"proud to champion commercial initiatives that advance U.S. interests and create lasting economic opportunity in Greece and Southeastern Europe."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has described Guilfoyle as an "incredibly effective advocate for the President's agenda," and said both he and Trump "greatly value" her work. That is the administration line: results over beltway pearl-clutching.
Results, though, are mixed on at least one front. Ukraine’s state-owned gas company told the Journal on a recent Friday that negotiations over future Atlantic-SEE purchases had halted. Agreements and MOUs elsewhere in the corridor still stand in the reporting; the Ukraine track does not.
Guilfoyle’s public style has been anything but quiet. She has mixed the energy diplomacy with fashion shows, art galas, and a steady feed to nearly two million Instagram followers. She presented credentials at the Greek Presidential Palace last November with Marafatsos walking behind her. In November 2025 she was photographed at a Greek basketball match with Marafatsos seated behind her and Olympiacos Piraeus co-owners Panayiotis and Yorgos Angelopoulos on either side. A September 2025 State Department photo shows Marafatsos with Guilfoyle close by.
None of that proves a crime. Federal lobbying registrations are legal. Ambassadors promote U.S. exports for a living. Private citizens may advise political allies. What the record does show is a tight loop: a new ambassador, a lobbyist who registered for Aktor within days of her arrival, six-figure payments to open doors at the White House, State, and Energy, repeated joint appearances with foreign leaders, and on-the-record promotion of the same company writing the checks.
Trump’s energy doctrine in Europe is not the scandal. Breaking Europe’s Russian gas habit with American LNG is strategic common sense, good for U.S. producers, bad for the Kremlin’s wallet, and overdue after years of German and EU wishful thinking. Guilfoyle was sent to Athens to push that agenda, and Rubio says she is doing it effectively.
Taxpayers still have a right to know when a private lobbyist is sitting in the photo, riding in the convoy, and collecting more than $440,000 to “establish connections” with the same government the ambassador represents. Honest markets and clean government are not optional extras on a trade mission. They are why foreign counterparts trust the pitch.
Binnall says the embassy runs the meetings. Aktor says it was in the corridor before Guilfoyle. The embassy says the Bulgaria trip followed State Department guidance. Brooks, from the prior administration’s NSC lane, says the optics and the private interest problem are real. Readers can weigh those claims against the federal filings, the travel scenes, and the company names on the memorandums.
American energy should knock Russian gas out of the Balkans. The people selling that win should not need a mystery plus-one to explain who they work for.
