Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1007543
maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 25 JULY 2018 5 NEWS trate Aaron Bugeja has put paid to that canard, embraced whole- heartedly by civil society activ- ists, Nationalist MPs and pun- dits paying homage to Caruana Galizia. CCTV footage and airline movements analysed by Bugeja paint the picture of what hap- pened on that fateful night: Hasheminejad landed in Malta, went straight to work at the Ta' Xbiex bank, and did not smuggle out any bank documentation. The magistrate said Lufthan- sa representative Dr Andrew Chetcuti Ganado showed him Hasheminejad's flight details when he flew in that day on LH 1276 from Frankfurt. CCTV footage from Malta International Airport shows him emerging from the airport at 11:40am and arriving at Pi- latus Bank at 12:45pm, where he stayed the whole time until he emerged at 9:15pm. Hasheminejad is seen entering with his luggage into the bank's boardroom, putting the suitcases by the side. He removes his tab- let, mobile phone, some papers and stationery from the bag which stays visible in the CCTV footage. He stays there until he exited the bank at 9:15pm. Throughout this whole period, various employees – mainly top officer Claude-Ann Sant Fourni- er – is seen entering the office. At 7:24pm, Luis Felipe Rivera pass- es on a paper to Hasheminejad, "who appears to set it aside with- out even paying much attention to it," the magistrate writes. When he leaves the bank, he puts his tablet and the papers he first removed, inside the bag, as well as Rivera's paper, and leaves. "The allegation that he re- moved a quantity of papers from the bank, which were related to what Caruana Galizia had pub- lished, does not result proven from the CCTV footage" Sealed before departure Then came the next day's shocker: journalists were alerted that a private jet operated by the company Vistajet had left Malta with no cargo or passengers, and was flying to Baku in Azerbaijan. The Egrant script was writing it- self, for Caruana Galizia claimed the bank had processed a trans- action from Azeri ruler Ilham Aliyev's daughter to Michelle Muscat's account. Bugeja investigated this allega- tion as well, speaking to VistaJet director Nicholas van der Meer as well as pilot Ludwig Wright, Malta Air Traffic Services rep- resentative Kenneth Chircop, and Malta International Airport, head of operations, Martin Dal- mas. "It turns out that the VistaJet airplane had arrived in Malta from the Ben Gurion airport in Israel on 19 April 2017 with two persons and did not have a scheduled flight. But on 20 April, at 3:43pm a request came in for a flight from Baku in Azerbaijan, to Dubai, carrying five people: four adults and a minor. Bugeja writes that none of these names had any interest for the inquiry. "Since this airplane in Malta was the closest the company had near Baku, it was assigned to fly there without passengers so it could then proceed to Dubai… It seems the crew was informed very late of this request and re- quired that the flight leaves early on 21 April 2017, as confirmed by the self-same pilot," Bugeja writes. The arrangements necessary were made so that the flight left at around 3:30-4am on 21 April to Baku, and then to Dubai. It left at 3:56am, and according to pilot Ludwig Wright, it was a 'positioning flight' without any passengers or cargo except for the three-pilot crew and a flight attendant and their personal be- longings, which consisted of a suitcase. "Before departure, the airplane was sealed and locked," Bugeja writes, dispelling claims that the plane was carrying any 'Egrant' documentation. "It was not proven to the necessary level re- quired by the law that this flight carried any documents related to the inquiry." suitcase and the conspiracy legs and wings tions of trust which showed that shares in Egrant Inc were held by Mossack Fonseca nominees for "Mrs Michelle Muscat". She did not upload a photo, scan or screenshot of the documents but, rather, text that had alleged- ly been copied from the originals and pasted on her blog. The text showed that there were at least two shares in Egrant Inc, and that two com- panies called Dubro Limited S.A. and Aliator S.A. were the nominees in the name of "Ms Michelle Muscat nee Tanti". Both documents included the text "The declaration of trust is dated 20 August 2015 and is signed by Jacqueline Alexander as director of Dubro Limited S.A." Following Caruana Galizia's revelations, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil took up the claims as his own battle cry, making it the main focus of the PN's electoral strategy. He even organised a public protest the following Sunday, calling on the Prime Minister to immediately resign. Then Malta Independent edi- tor, Pierre Portelli, claimed to have seen the documents and he even presented them to Magis- trate Bugeja when called to tes- tify during the inquiry. During his inquiry, Magistrate Bugeja established that Pilatus Bank confirmed there was a fil- ing cabinet – which many re- ferred to as a safe – inside the bank's kitchen for some time and that they had been told that sensitive documents were kept inside. But the inquiry failed to turn up the declarations of trust allegedly showing Michelle Muscat to be the UBO of Egrant Inc. Moreover, the magistrate ap- pointed forensic expert Elisa- beth Briggs of Key Forensic Ser- vices to examine the documents provided by Portelli. Coventry-based Key Foren- sic Services is one of the lead- ing forensic service providers in the UK offering a full range of forensic services to the criminal justice system, defence solici- tors/lawyers and private sector companies. Briggs has been em- ployed with KFS for the past 10 years. Briggs examined the docu- ments twice and concluded that the signature of Jacqueline Al- exander on the documents pro- vided did not match Alexander's signature. "These declarations of trust are therefore fake documents, forged by parties who are as yet unknown," the magistrate wrote in the conclusions on the in- quiry. Forensic accountants Har- binson Forensics wrote to the magistrate: "We have not found any digital versions of the Dec- larations of Trust you have been given which allegedly show that shares in Egrant Inc. are held by Mossack Fonseca nominees for "Mrs Michelle Muscat". We understand that these were al- legedly provided to Pilatus by Brian Tonna when it is alleged he opened a bank account for Egrant Inc. Their absence from the data sets of Nexia BT, Pila- tus Bank and the Panama Papers would suggest that the Decla- rations of Trust you have been given were not created in either Pilatus or Nexia BT or by Mos- sack Fonseca." TIA RELJIC THERE is absolutely no evi- dence whatsoever that Egrant Inc belonged to the Prime Minister, his wife, or anyone in his family – or that it was set up for their benefit in any way. Nor that Egrant even had a Pilatus Bank account, or that it had received a transfer from the ruling family of Azerbai- jan, as was alleged by the late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia's. But what about his chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and En- ergy Minister Konrad Mizzi? The companies Egrant Inc, Tillgate Inc, and Hearnville Inc were all bought by Brian Ton- na of Nexia BT back in July of 2013, and the latter two were acquired by Schembri and Mizzi respectively in July 2015. While it has been found that efforts were made to open up foreign bank accounts for Tillgate and Hearnville, no evidence was found to suggest that the same was done for Egrant. The Magistrate's report does not say much about Schembri due to separate ongoing mag- isterial inquiries, but it does confirm that he held two Pi- latus Bank accounts and that one of his accounts received a transaction from an account owned by Brian Tonna's com- pany, Willerby Trading Inc. But the report found no evi- dence that either one of Schem- bri's Pilatus accounts was held in the name of Tillgate, nor were there any attempts to open such an account with the bank. According to the Forensic Accountants Harbin- son Forensic, Pilatus records "do not show any bank ac- counts being opened, nor any discussion of the possibility of opening bank accounts at Pi- latus for Egrant, Tillgate (UBO Keith Schembri) or Hearnville (UBO Konrad Mizzi)." Caruana Galizia's source, Maria Efimova, had said that there was a Pilatus account for Tillgate, and that Brian Tonna also held a personal account at the bank. But the Forensic Accountants found no such evidence. "Keith Schembri as a client of Pilatus Bank had two personal accounts in his name," the re- port read, adding that Schem- bri's KYC forms were detailed and amounted to 78 pages. "It was not found that Schembri was using these accounts regu- larly, in fact there were only a few transactions spread across a period of time." Schembri's bank statements did not show any transactions from any per- sons in Azerbaijan at all. No evidence was found that Konrad Mizzi or any member of his family ever held an ac- count at Pilatus. Inquiry finds no evidence of Tillgate, Hearnville accounts at Pilatus Bank