Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1008890
14 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 29 JULY 2018 NEWS Egrant Inquiry A look at the major milestones in the Egrant saga shows how former PN leader Simon Busuttil and the party itself took up the issue of the ownership of Egrant as their major battle cry in the run-up to the 2017 election and beyond PAUL COCKS IN April 2017 Malta was caught up in an unfolding drama over the identity of the ultimate beneficial owner of a secret Panama offshore company whose name first broke during the Panama Pa- pers revelations of April 2016: Egrant. Egrant was seen as the third, mysterious company formed alongside Konrad Mizzi's Hearnville Inc. and Keith Schembri's Tillgate; and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's decision to retain his energy minister and chief- of-staff, as well as the lack of a police investigation into the Panama Papers affair, turned him into the convenient sus- pect. Muscat had always brushed aside the allegations, but mat- ters came to a head when Malta Independent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia pub- lished a series of blogs detail- ing money transfers from the Azerbaijani first family to an account supposedly held in the name of Michelle Mus- cat, the Prime Minister's wife, whom she claimed was the beneficial owner of Egrant. The proof, Caruana Galizia said, was a declaration of trust – a document provided by auditors Nexia BT to Pilatus Bank showing Muscat as the UBO of Egrant – that was re- moved from a safe inside the Whitehall Mansions offices of the bank in March 2016. Busuttil's YANNICK PACE FORMER FIAU investigator Jonathan Ferris had personally promised to travel to Greece to testify in favour of Maria Efimova, in court proceedings challeng- ing a European Arrest Warrant issued against her by Malta. But her lawyer has denied sugges- tions made by Efimova's husband on Twitter that Ferris would have sent an affidavit on her claims that two Pilatus Bank officials were present during her interrogation when she was accused by her employers of misappropriating money from the bank. Efimova was behind allegations by the late Daphne Caruana Galizia that the Panamanian company Egrant Inc. belonged to Michelle Muscat, the Prime Minister's wife. Efimova, a Russian national who was sacked by Pilatus Bank in 2016, has since fled the island but faces two sets of criminal proceedings: defrauding Pilatus Bank, and making false accu- sations about the officers who inter- rogated her – among them Ferris, who was a police inspector up until June 2016, before leaving to join the FIAU. Her failure to turn up in court after she left Malta led the courts to issue two European Arrest Warrants (EAW) against her. But after turning herself in to Greek police in March 2018 – the day Pilatus Bank chairman Ali Sadr Hasheminejad was arrested in the United States – a Greek court ruled that she should not be extradited to Malta. After last Sunday's publication of Magistrate Aaron Bugeja's 15-month investigation on the Egrant allegation – which inquiry stated that her testimony contained too many contradictions and could not be relied on – Ferris accused Efimova of lying about him, adding that he was "angrier than any- one" that she hadn't been extradited to Malta. Efimova and her Cypriot husband Pantelis Varnavas hit back at Ferris's comments on Twitter, with Varnavas claiming that Ferris had sent an affi- davit to Efimova's lawyer in Greece stating that bank officials were present during her interrogation in Malta. "My wife was put in lock-up and intimidat- ed. And if he wants to see my wife he can visit us in Crete, and I will explain to him who suffered," Varnavas wrote. Efimova called Ferris a "crook's door- mat" and accused him personally of "putting [her] through hell and trying to make even more damage." Ferris had indeed told MaltaToday at the time of Efimova's court hearing in Athens that he was willing to "testify to the truth" if requested by the au- thorities there. But Efimova's lawyer this week told MaltaToday that he had not received an affidavit from Ferris, as claimed by Varnavas, although he couldn't be sure where a similar document had been presented to Maltese authorities. He said he had personally spoken to Ferris, who assured him that he would be willing to travel to Greece and testify if required to. While Ferris was ultimately not re- quired to testify on Efimova's behalf, Nationalist MEP David Casa had trav- elled to Greece to visit Efimova in jail and to testify in her favour. Asked by MaltaToday whether he re- gretted defending Efimova, Casa said their "collaboration" related to his work investigating the "criminal ac- tivities exposed in relation to Pilatus Bank, Nexia BT, Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri." Casa is pursuing his own political battle against Labour minister Konrad Mizzi and the PM's chief of staff after publishing an unfinished dossier by the FIAU alleging a possible money laun- dering set-up – a day after the Egrant inquiry findings were published. "On that she has been proved right time and time again," Casa said, point- ing out that Efimova had been right about the bank's client list, its con- nection to auditors Nexia BT, "the connection between Pilatus Bank and Henley & Partners, and on the money laundering processes of the bank. My testimony in Greece was related to my work. The subject-matter of the 49 pages of the released inquiry is not the subject of my work and nor was it part of my testimony." 'Whistleblowers' feud: Efimova lawyer denies Ferris affidavit Jonathan Ferris (right) accused Maria Efimova (above) of lying about him in her statements to magistrate Aaron Bugeja