Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1330252
11 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 17 JANUARY 2021 NEWS MATTHEW VELLA IN one of Kenneth Rijock's recent mis- sives against former prime minister Jo- seph Muscat, the American "financial crimes blogger" claims a statue of Mus- cat will be unveiled in Valletta in 2021. The image of the alleged statue is lifted from a MaltaToday April Fool's post of 2014. It is one of many episodes in which Rijock finds himself overreaching, ev- er since he alleged that Muscat could be extradited to the US to face a money laundering charge. According to the Mi- ami lawyer, Muscat has embezzled $300 million in "currency, precious gems, metals, financial instruments, smuggled cigarettes, illicit tuna, oil and petroleum products." The extraordinary allegation is tied to a thread of truth: he claims in- vestigators are looking at records from Pilatus Bank, Satabank, Bank of Valletta (BOV), Portmann Capital Management and Sparkasse Bank Malta – all banks that have been in the eye of investigators in the last years. Rijock's volley of claims have been hard for Muscat to ignore. In September 2020, Muscat accused him of concocting "weird conspiracies" and denounces his allega- tions as "hogwash". "To make it clear: this convicted felon and fraudster claims that an authority told him it is doing some- thing that the same authority does not do. This further confirms that this person is a not-so-good con artist who can only find fertile ground with the gullible." According to OffshoreAlert, Rijock is a disbarred attorney who, in 1990, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to de- fraud the IRS and one count of racketeer- ing at federal court in Gainesville, Flor- ida, for which he received a 24-month prison sentence. After being released from prison, he began promoting himself as a 'reformed money launderer', regularly speaking at Anti-Money Laundering conferences and operating as a consultant and writer in the areas of financial crime and compli- ance, most notably working on behalf of Know Your Customer database provider World-Check and serving as "Anti-Mon- ey Laundering Compliance Consultant" for Florida-based Mutual Benefits Cor- poration. But this company was closed down by Florida regulators in 2004 after perpe- trating a $1 billion Ponzi scheme, for which 13 participants were subsequent- ly criminally convicted, including the scheme's mastermind, career fraudster Joel Steinger, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2014. Rijock today has become a darling of the anti-Muscat brigade on social media, al- leging that the former prime minister has been a major criminal mastermind all along. By latching onto al- ready published stories concerning Muscat, Ri- jock stretches the truth to the far frontiers of the almost-possible but so far has never backed up the allegations he metes out. That a similar pattern of behaviour already exists cannot be denied. In October 2019, Ri- jock was found to have "falsely" accused an Is- raeli attorney, Steven Slom, of involve- ment in serious financial crime. A Miami judge ruled that the "undisputed record" showed that Rijock "published false and defamatory statements about Slom", claiming that the attorney was a money launder and a criminal, and even of being not licensed to practice law in Israel and that he "exploits women". Rijock submit- ted no evidence to support any of his af- firmative defences. That was the second time in two years that Rijock had lost a defamation com- plaint in the United States, with a default being entered against him at federal court in Miami in 2017 in an action brought by Canadian firm Northland Wealth Man- agement Inc., which accused him of us- ing his 'Financial Crime Blog' to conduct a "malicious and relentless campaign of fake news" as revenge for Northland pre- venting an elderly client from transferring funds to a Florida firm for which Rijock was "chief compliance officer". North- land obtained a default order against Ri- jock, but did not pursue damages and the case was closed. This pattern of blogs in this case is eerily identical and systemat- ic as in his most recent volley of posts. In their complaint, Northland asked what they had done to "attract the attention, and the ma- licious ire" of Rijock. "They had the audacity to ask questions about whether a company – whose so-called com- pliance program was run by Rijock – was an appropriate investment for an elderly client. In- deed, within 48 hours after Northland's termination of the cli- ent relationship that prompted these questions, Rijock commenced his cam- paign of revenge and retaliation against plaintiffs, beginning with a September 2, 2015 blog posting accusing Northland of being 'behind' a (completely imaginary) '$450m trading scam', purportedly perpe- trated by an (entirely made up) 'Cayman Gang of Four'." Rijock spent the next 18 months in a storm of fake news postings in which he accused Northland of committing fraud, 'grand theft', and "egregious criminal conduct" – over 100 different statements which Northland complained were de- signed to decimate their professional and personal reputations. Rijock's barrage of 'news', which more often than not cites unnamed, confiden- tial sources with speculative titbits on in- vestigations yet to be revealed, has found its audience in Malta. But it is clear that his more ardent fans enjoy the sight of his brazen accusations of Joseph Muscat's alleged international mega-criminality, rather than question- ing whether Rijock's information is in- deed correct. To boot, he has been am- ply reposted by Nationalist MPs on the frontline of the 'anti-Muscat' campaign and several news outlets. Rijock has now set himself up as the holder of secrets which could easily be proven, yet he does not: on 14 December he claimed a whistleblower on Muscat's criminal activities was almost run over by the police and that he had photos to prove it, but he did not publish them. The whistleblower, he claims, managed to get out of harm's way just as the rogue police car threatened to kill him... And adding further to the script that writes itself... Muscat would be at the heart of some Eastern European criminal organisation. Citing "sources known to be reliable", Rijock claims Muscat held private meetings with leaders of Eastern European organized crime groups who had been doing business with him "for years" and that they are "genuinely afraid that Muscat will roll over on them, their illicit operations, and all the individuals that he personally dealt with, in order to save himself from that dreaded 20-year sentence for money laundering which is staring him in the face come 2021." He also claims US government sources told him that Muscat is a named co-de- fendant in a pending money laundering and financial crime case. There is no doubt that Rijock is fed snip- pets of 'quasi-possible' events from the Maltese rumour mill. By claiming that murdered banker Christian Pandolfino was a "money launderer", he adds egre- gious speculation to Pandolfino's role as a financial expert. So... whistleblowers hunted down by the Maltese police... a disgraced former PM at the heart of an Eastern European crime ring... and a Sliema home invasion with fi- nancial crime at its heart. At some point, the Rijock arc of events starts becoming hard to keep track of. Perhaps he is sufficiently distant from the island to peddle half-baked theories despite not having any reasonable access to local investigators. At some point, he will be either vindicated with a final re- veal that – given the way the script is go- ing – would see Muscat behind bars or accused in the States. Or he might just fade into a historical line-up of political conspirators, crowd- funded along the way by avid readers. What does American blogger Kenneth Rijock's past and legal troubles tell us about the purported veracity of his outlandish claims on Malta and Muscat? American grime story Kenneth Rijock has claimed that former Malta PM Joseph Muscat sits down with Eastern European criminals... one of his more outlandish claims since alleging he could be the subject of an FBI investigation He will either be vindicated with a final reveal that sees Muscat indicted, or he'll fade into a historical line-up of political conspirators