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TERENCE Gialanze was a heav- ily indebted man when he disap- peared with no trace in Novem- ber 2012, court records show. The 24-year-old flaunted un- explained wealth at a young age. He carried a Bank of Valletta Platinum Visa card with a credit limit of €15,000, owned several luxury cars and a yacht that he kept at the Portomaso Marina. But underneath this façade of easy money, court records paint a picture of a devious, sweet- talker who convinced vulner- able people to act as guarantors for loans that bankrolled his lav- ish lifestyle. His disappearance at the end of November 2012 has left vic- tims, including his step-sister, who suffered an arson attack on her house in 2013, and a sick man who risks losing his house after acting as guarantor for two loans Gialanze obtained from BOV and an individual. Gialanze married his 19-year- old Russian girlfriend, Inna Furtseva, in December 2007, a year after the two first met in a Russian dance club. The first brush with the banks came a year later when the seemingly ordinary couple took out a home loan with HSBC for €122,642 to purchase a fourth- floor San Gwann apartment and garage. The deposit for the purchase had been gifted by Gialanze's father Walter, who owned a now-defunct detergents company based in Mrieħel. Between 2008 and 2011 the couple were on time with their monthly repayments. But this changed in August 2011 when the repayments stopped and interest started to accrue on the outstanding balance. The last recorded payment made by Gialanze was a lump sum of €7,000, some two weeks before he disappeared in No- vember 2012. But the HSBC home loan was only the start of Gialanze's debt- ridden history. At around the same time Gi- alanze had racked up a debt of €70,000 with a certain Hadrian Borg, according to his father. In an affidavit to the courts, Walter Gialanze said he stepped in to help Terence pay off the debt by pledging factory ma- chinery as a guarantee. The debt had to be repaid by November 2013. Terence had worked at his father's company as a sales rep up until 2009, at the age of 21, when he decided to set up his own business. This is when he joined Adrian and Robert Agi- us to form a company that was to import detergents, sanitary ware, beverages and food. Company records show that the three men held equal share- holding in the company (2,000 shares each with a nominal val- ue of €1) called Global Interna- tional Enterprises Ltd. It was around this time that Gialanze's wife had gone back to Russia to be close to her family. 4 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 10 NOVEMBER 2019 NEWS Terence Gialanze vanished with no trace at the end of November 2012, leaving behind him a trail of debt and victims who were sweet-talked into giving him loan guarantees. Kurt Sansone revisits the case. CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Adrian Agius was appointed sole director and had to rep- resent the company in all its dealings, leaving little doubt as to who was calling the shots in the partnership. However, on 2 November 2012, company records show that Gialanze transferred his shareholding (2,000 shares) to Imora Holdings Ltd, belonging to Adrian Agius. Then on 9 November, Gi- alanze made a €7,000 lump sum payment on his HSBC home loan after having de- faulted on repayments for al- most a year. The young man who boasted with friends of living in a villa in Bidnija, owned a 40-foot Sunseeker boat moored at Por- tomaso Marina, and a Bentley, among other luxury cars, went missing on 27 November. On 3 December 2012, Gi- alanze's black Fiat 500 was found parked in Qawra with no sign of a break-in. It is un- derstood that the car had been parked in the same spot for five days. In a 2017 affidavit, forming part of a case in which Bank of Valletta is chasing Gialanze and a guarantor for money it is owed, Gialanze's father, Wil- liam Gialanze, said: "I do not know where my son is. He may have escaped from Malta." Gialanze's Russian wife and his step-sister also told the court in separate cases that they did not know where their next of kin was. The man's disappearance remains a mystery but it also raises serious question marks as to how a 24-year-old could have had easy access to bank finance, which he used to sus- tain his over the top lifestyle. In a blogpost in 2014, two years after the disappear- ance, Daphne Caruana Galizia claimed Gialanze was an "asso- ciate" of Adrian Agius, alleging that he was involved in crimi- nal activity. She did not elaborate further but today's revelations estab- lish for the first time a direct business link between Gialanze and the Agius brothers. Trail of lies, debt and misery Terence Gialanze left behind High life: Gialanze slums it out at sea and, right, enjoying the Kiev night-life with friends back in 2011