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Malta Business Review<br />
ANALYSIS & DEBATE<br />
Maltese PM and wife<br />
cleared of wrongdoing in<br />
graft case<br />
‘This was nothing more than a frame-up against<br />
me and my family,’ says Joseph Muscat.<br />
By Laurens Cerulus<br />
Malta’s Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said<br />
Sunday his “nightmare” was over after an<br />
inquiry ruled that his family had no links to a<br />
company in Panama.<br />
“The day of truth has finally arrived,” Muscat<br />
said. “Someone falsified the documents. This<br />
was nothing more than a frame-up against<br />
me and my family … They wanted to harm<br />
me and the Maltese economy.” An emotional<br />
Muscat was speaking at a press conference<br />
minutes after the conclusions of a inquiry<br />
were published.<br />
Muscat’s wife Michelle had been accused<br />
of being the beneficial owner of Egrant, a<br />
company opened by Mossack Fonseca, the<br />
law firm at the center of the Panama Papers<br />
scandal. It was alleged that Mrs. Muscat<br />
received $1 million through the firm from<br />
the daughter of Azerbaijan’s president,<br />
Ilham Aliyev.<br />
The claims were made by journalist Daphne<br />
Caruana Galizia — who was murdered by a car<br />
bomb in October 2017 — and backed up by<br />
an employee of Pilatus bank, Maria Efimova.<br />
However, despite the allegations, any evidence<br />
which might have been incriminated had long<br />
been removed the same night she broke the<br />
story, when Seyed Ali Sadr Hasheminejad,<br />
Pilatus’ Iranian owner, now under monitored<br />
custody in the US, was filmed leaving the bank<br />
through an emergency exit carrying heavy<br />
suitcases. The same had happened during one<br />
evening, when the late blogger reported bags<br />
being removed from Maltese company at the<br />
heart of the Panama scandal, Nexia BT, with vans<br />
reportedly being provided by Kasco, company<br />
owned by Keith Schembri, the PM’s Chief of<br />
Staff. Any documented or online evidence must<br />
have been carefully erased as a precautionary<br />
measure by the people behind this secretive<br />
and cagey practice, which truth may never be<br />
known on an Island that thrives and responsible<br />
offenders brought before justice.<br />
Unlike other occasions when asked about<br />
the Panama companies of close associates<br />
Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, there was<br />
never a hint of uncertainty in Muscat’s voice<br />
when talking about Egrant. Magistrate Aaron<br />
Bugeja’s Egrant inquiry did not succeed in<br />
establishing who the ultimate beneficial<br />
owner of the Panamanian company Egrant<br />
is. Although a weight may have been lifted<br />
Maltese PM Joseph Muscat and his wife Michelle attend the Queen's<br />
Dinner at Buckingham Palace, April 2018 | Pool photo by Daniel<br />
Leal-Olivas/Getty Images<br />
"This was nothing more<br />
than a frame-up against<br />
me and my family …<br />
They wanted to harm<br />
me and the Maltese<br />
economy.<br />
off the Muscats and the country still seeks to<br />
know the genuine truth, until then no closure<br />
can be announced on the Egrant saga. Malta<br />
cannot be expected to accept that the owner<br />
of Egrant will never be known, moreso when<br />
the UAE, where it was claimed that Egrant Inc.<br />
held a bank account, has failed to respond to<br />
Magistrate Bugeja’s request for information.<br />
As was foreseen, Magistrate Bugeja would<br />
find it impossible to prove or disprove that<br />
Michelle Muscat was the ultimate beneficial<br />
owner of the company because he would be<br />
unable to prove the identity of the company’s<br />
ultimate beneficial owner<br />
DOI - Ruben Piscopo<br />
The inquiry’s final report said it was hard to<br />
reconcile the testimonies of Caruana Galizia<br />
and Efimova, who gave contrasting versions<br />
of events. “A hundred suspicions do not<br />
amount to a single piece of evidence,” the<br />
conclusions said.<br />
However, that the inquiry stated that there<br />
was great difficulty to reconcile the accounts<br />
given by Efimova with those given by Caruana<br />
Galizia and Pierre Portelli with regard to<br />
many of the most important aspects of the<br />
remainder of the evidence gathered, still<br />
leaves pockets of black holes which remain<br />
surreptitious and unanswered.<br />
“Not one of the allegations that were made<br />
involving my wife Michelle, myself, my family,<br />
or persons close to us were found to be true,”<br />
Muscat said in a statement.<br />
Muscat used the press conference to slam<br />
Simon Busuttil, leader of the opposition<br />
Nationalist Party, for supporting the claims<br />
of corruption. <strong>MBR</strong><br />
Sources: POLITICO; The Guardian; Reuters;<br />
Malta Today<br />
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