MBR ISSUE 43

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