Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1130632
4 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 16 JUNE 2019 NEWS MATTHEW VELLA MONTHS before she succumbed to cancer in late November 2017, Eve Ba- jada spoke to the late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. She had an important cache of docu- ments in her hand, implicating the as- piring PN leader Adrian Delia, an expe- rienced litigation lawyer, in a legal feud over a tiny property portfolio in London, with a prostitution racket at its heart. Eve Bajada was the wife of Emma- nuel, aka Lolly, Bajada – a man who in 2006 had admitted to money laundering through brothels at Pace's Guesthouse in Sliema and Adam's Guesthouse in St Ju- lian's. For that crime he was given a two- year prison sentence suspended for four years, and fined €50,000. The two guest- houses were in operation for two months in 2005 before the police swooped down on them in May of that year. His defence lawyer at the time was Chris Cardona, then a Labour MP, now a minister and deputy leader of the Labour Party. Eve Bajada had, ironically, already been the target of Caruana Galizia's pen. At some point in time when a nascent inter- net culture was trolling Caruana Galizia over her anti-Labour poison pen blogs, Bajada would share links to a scurril- ous 'Daphne Is A Transsexual' website. Caruana Galizia hit back at Bajada's known connection to the Soho world of prostitution, and of course, her hus- band's arrest in Malta. You will not find the posts, except on a Waybackmachine screengrab, because Caruana Galizia de- leted them years later when Bajada came over to pass on the information on Delia. It looked like a last act of defiance for Eve Bajada, as she entered her last months of life. Adrian Delia had been at the heart of the legal battle between Eve's husband Lolly, and his brother Eucha- rist, the owner of various Soho proper- ties. The properties had been targeted by the London Met Police in a prostitution bust called Operation Pabail in 2003, and Eucharist scrambled to have his 'tenant' Lolly, his own brother, relinquish the properties fast. "It was a legal power game," says Eucha- rist's son Kris, who emphatically denies that his father, a property entrepreneur in his own right, was ever part of the Mal- tese underworld that once held sway in Soho, or that he had any direct implica- tion in the prostitution racket revealed by Operation Pabail. But Eucharist's corporate handler, Adri- an Delia – a one-time business partner of Kris, whom he knew since their uni- versity days – was plunged into scandal once the confidential legal papers were published in 2017 by Daphne Caruana Galizia and MaltaToday. To this day, the Opposition leader is burdened with an investigation into his financial affairs by the Financial Intelli- gence Analysis Unit, particularly on how he handled Bajada's affairs. And in turn, Delia has tried hard to protect his name by claiming forgeries of his signatures in- tended at incriminating him. The Soho property game Kris Bajada, 50, was studying business at the University of Malta when he and law student Adrian Delia became friends. As fate would have it, Bajada married the sister of future PN leader Simon Busuttil, Delia's predecessor and a reference point for antagonists of the present PN leader. Bajada wants to make it clear that his father Eucharist, who used offshore com- panies to acquire his properties in Lon- don, was never part of the once-notori- ous Maltese-Soho underworld. "My family has never had any part in that world. My father was in property and he saw a deal to be made when he saw that property. And he made it work for him, because by vesting own- ership of those properties in offshore companies, when the rent is paid into an offshore bank account the owner is not liable for tax – everything was le- gal and above-board. And Adrian De- lia knew it, because he saw the prop- erty and he set up the Barclays account to receive payments on the rent," Kris Bajada told MaltaToday. While Bajada insists that the property deal was unconnected to the prostitution racket that took place, the public docu- ments available on the properties offer a more nuanced picture. It was Lolly himself who approached his brother with the possibility that he ac- quire the London properties – 52 Greek Street in Soho, and the interconnected tenement of 16 Stanhope Row and 16 Market Mews in Mayfair. But it's their previous ownership that gives the strong- est hint about the origin, and use of these London properties. In the Stanhope Row title, the property was at one point owned by Victor Mi- callef, aka 'Bajzu', a one-time member of the defunct Maltese syndicate run by clip-joint king 'Big' Frank Mifsud and Bernie Silver. Micallef had faced charges of kidnapping and beating a Maltese as- sociate he suspected of having shopped the crime ring to the police. So, when in 1999, Eucharist Bajada ac- quired the properties through the off- shore companies AAS Freight Services and Healey Properties, surely enough those properties came with their own chequered history. That it was his broth- er who presented him with the deal – only years later he would be running a brothel in Malta – is indicative of the link between these London properties and the criminal legacy of the Maltese Syndicate. "It's not true that my father was aware of prostitution," Kris Bajada insists. "Neither was my uncle Frank [Bajada], who owned a hotel in Sussex Gardens, connected to this world. They had noth- ing to do with the Maltese underworld in Soho at the time. "My father was a property owner who saw a good deal in London. When Oper- ation Pabail happened in 2003, he risked losing those properties so he wanted to force out his brother Lolly from the ten- ancy agreement they had." So started what Kris Bajada calls a "le- gal power game" to force Lolly Bajada to rescind his tenancy agreement on the houses Eucharist owned through AAC and another offshore company, Healey Properties. The director of these offshore companies was none other than Adrian Delia, charged by Bajada to handle legal and financial affairs, and collect the rent on these properties from Lolly Bajada. The tax avoidance system employed a network of people: as director of the off- shore company that owned the proper- ties, Delia charged a London solicitor to act on his behalf on property exchanges and mortgage transactions; Lolly used a name-lender to act on his behalf as the legal tenant, a down-and-out chap called Martin Farrugia, since passed away. The rent on the Soho and Mayfair properties was set at £20,500 a month – according to an unsigned tenancy agreement from 2001 seen by MaltaToday. But that was before the properties were struck by the London Met Police in July 2003, in a bust on a prostitution ring run by Gulnara Gadzijeva, who recruited women from Eastern Europe. The news- paper reports of the court proceedings are clear. "I think the owners of the flat are Maltese," she had told the court. "The Maltese people do exist… but I probably don't know their real names." She also claimed she would pay Eve Ba- jada £4,000 a month. Things started to change at this point. The legal battle "My father risked losing the properties because of what had happened. The val- ue of the property would have been deci- mated. So he engaged lawyers to force Lolly out of the tenancy agreement by creating a large bill of damages for what happened," Kris Bajada says, again deny- ing any connection to what was taking place in the houses. "Neither Lolly nor Eve were ever charged in the affair, and Gadzjeva her- self ran around a dozen other properties for the prostitution ring. "I want to say the truth, even though Delia has been unjust with me over what he has said: neither my father or his brother, nor Delia himself, were ever im- The property deal that tarnished Adrian Delia Echoes of the Maltese Syndicate Adrian Delia