Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1130632
5 NEWS maltatoday | SUNDAY • 16 JUNE 2019 plicated in this prostitution racket." The missing evidence at this point would be anything showing that Lolly and Eve Bajada were pocketing rents over and above what was expected on the properties, amounts that meant they were living off the immoral earnings of the prostitutes. But perhaps these are clues that have already been secured by the FIAU's own investigation into the matter, which reportedly has established Delia's Jersey account had received over £349,000. In December 2003, Adrian Delia ap- pointed London lawyers Pitts-Tucker to write to Lolly and Eve Bajada, accusing them of having pocketed over £35,000 in monthly rents on the London properties owned by Healey and AAS – or £1.46 million since 1999 – and threatening an action for embezzlement and breach of trust. Lolly Bajada's lawyers wrote back to Delia, claiming they had paid him £20,000 every month into his Barclay's International account in Jersey. In the midst of the feud, Kris Bajada says he managed to convince – upon suitable payment – Lolly's strawman Martin Farrugia to 'switch sides', in a bid to facilitate his eviction from the proper- ties as the tenant. So Delia's London lawyers now were also acting on behalf of Farrugia, accus- ing Lolly and Eve – technically the 'man- agers' for Farrugia's tenancy – of having collected some £800,000 in rents that had not been paid up to Farrugia. "[Hea- ley] has suffered damage and loss of val- ue because these properties have become tainted with their use in your hands for the purposes of prostitution as brothels," the legal letter to Lolly and Eve reads. With Farrugia out, Eucharist Bajada passed on the title of his Soho property to a certain Mark Barbara – a nominee with an address registered at his London lawyers – whom he knew from restora- tion works he had carried out at his Mal- ta house. Yet once again the connections cannot be ignored. When Lolly Pace was arrested for run- ning a brothel in Malta in 2005, his law- yer was Chris Cardona. Today, Mark Barbara is the designated driver to min- ister Cardona. Additionally, Eucharist Bajada tight- ened his affairs by appointing Delia as a director of Healey Properties' own shareholding companies Oaklawn and Penleigh, a double-tier of protection for the company ownership. The memoran- dum also shows Cardona's name listed as a director, but unlike Delia's, there is no signature. Barbara's close association with Car- dona only highlights what Kris Bajada says are the "numerous coincidences that make up life in Malta, a small place where everyone knows everybody… you cannot suggest there is bad faith behind every 'manoeuvre'." However, even after Operation Pabail, the properties, until recently, were still being used for prostitution services. According to City of Westminster planning records, the owner of the Greek Street property is now a British Virgin Islands company called Maybole Devel- opment Corporation, whose lawyers are the same Bajada had been using – Pitts- Tucker. "What is clear is that the use of the basement for purposes of prostitution commenced within the last 10 years without the benefit of planning permis- sion," planning inspectors wrote in 2007, after having conducted numerous in- spections in 2004 and 2006. Pitts-Tucker wrote back saying, "the use of the basement for purposes of prostitution was being undertaken with- out their client's knowledge and steps had been taken to evict the occupier." FIAU Investigation According to the Times the FIAU has conducted an in-depth analysis of Delia's Jersey account, which it found had been opened in February 2001 and closed in October 2004. During this period, an equivalent of roughly £346,000, in the form of cheques and cash, would have been deposited into the account from various bank branches around London. The FIAU tracked funds from Delia's Jersey account being transferred to two Swiss accounts as well as the company Healey Properties Limited, which is reg- istered in the Bahamas. The company owned a number of the properties known to have been used as brothels over this period. The company is believed to have held eight accounts at Bank of Valletta and possibly others in different jurisdictions. More than half of the money, some £218,000, was transferred to two accounts in Switzerland but it was unclear where the money moved to next. £91,568 went to Healey Properties Ltd and £40,000 to E&M Bajada Ltd, in Malta. Investigators who spoke with the news- paper pointed out that deposits to Delia's account were irregular and varied from £400 to £16,000 per deposit, suggesting they were not regular rent payments. Top: Lolly and Eve Bajada, in a screenshot from a YouTube video. In 2017, months before she succumbed to cancer, Eve Bajada got her own back on Adrian Delia, as he entered politics, by telling Daphne Caruana Galizia about the London property deals 1. Eucharist Bajada was the ultimate beneficial owner of the London properties 2. He used offshore companies Oaklawn and Penleigh to act as shareholders in other companies that held the properties, namely Healey Properties and AAC Freight Services 3. Adrian Delia acted as the director of these companies and also opened a bank account to receive monies from the property rents 4. The properties would be officially rented out, or licensed, to a strawman or name-lender, like Martin Farrugia or Mark Barbara 5. Farrugia was acting as a name-lender to Bajada's brother Emanuel, aka Lolly, and his wife Eve, who were, in fact, 'managing' the properties and collecting the rents, ostensibly paying them into Delia's Barclay's International account in Jersey 6. Despite the prostitution racket, probably ongoing ever since the properties were once in the hands of the Maltese crime syndicate led by Big Frank Mifsud, the Bajadas were never implicated in the goings-on The layer cake Understanding the Bajada-Delia connection in Soho