Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1407953
5 NEWS maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 08 SEPTEMBER 2021 PN wants criminal investigation on Labour links to Yorgen Fenech promo deal NICOLE MEILAK PAYMENTS have been made to settle the Nationalist Party's VAT debts, and arrangements are in place so that these pay- ments continue, said PN spokes- person Mark Anthony Sammut. In response to questions on the PN's tax shortcomings, Sammut admitted that parties should be of example when paying tax, after a Times of Malta report found that the party's media company Media. link, together with the Labour Party's ONE, owe more than €5 million in unpaid debt. Sammut was speaking at a party press conference on re- cent allegations that a former Labour CEO communicated with Yorgen Fenech over a €200,000 deal for the compa- ny B.E.D services, which at one point operated at the same ad- dress as Labour's ONE. Together with PN candidate Charles Azzopardi, who is a former Labour Party mayor, the party will file a criminal complaint at the Police Gen- eral Headquarters in Floriana, for an investigation into the €200,000-deal allegations. Sammut said that the investiga- tion ought to consider how the Labour Party is being financed, and whether the party has sim- ilar arrangements with other companies that took suspicious tenders or benefitted from gov- ernment landgrabs for cheap. The Nationalist Party had a similar financing structure in place. In 2017, it was re- vealed that the dB Group paid the monthly salaries of former PN secretary-general Rosette Thake and former CEO Brian St John. On this issue, Sammut said that donations to the PN from dB Group were always carried out according to law. "When the Group tried to use those donations to silence the par- ty, the party didn't let itself be bought," he said. Political parties should be state-funded, PN argues Sammut added that the party would be open to having a police investigation be extended to the financing of all political parties. "We have nothing to hide," he remarked. "Our donations are always car- ried out with receipts and in line with the law. Our new donation portal will allow small donations in line with the law." He further reiterated the par- ty's stance that the best par- ty financing model would be a state-financing one, with dona- tions prohibited in every way. "Our system today is one where parties depend on donations […] Parties knock on doors and ask for money. This isn't ideal in a democracy." Meanwhile, the Labour Party lambasted the Nationalist Party with full force, accusing the Op- position of trying to undermine the party by playing dirty tricks with the institutions. "The Labour Party, with all its structures, will stop with all its strength this strategy designed to scare people away from help- ing the Labour Party," a party statement reads. Additionally, the PL remarked that it had introduced the party financing law, and has complied with it all throughout. "While, the Labour Party al- ready immediately declared yesterday that it is not receiving any money from Yorgen Fenech, much less €200,000, Bernard Grech must understand how he and his party will be the ones who will have the most to an- swer for in the future." JAMES DEBONO ACCLAIMED Greek composer Mikis Theodorakis, who died at 96 last week, had a Maltese con- nection: that of being commis- sioned by Dom Mintoff to write a hymn commemorating Free- dom Day in 1979. Best known for composing the soundtrack of the film Zorba the Greek, based on Nikos Ka- zantzakis' novel and starring An- thony Quinn and Irene Papas, Theodorakis was commissioned by the Labour prime minister to pen a hymn marking the day that saw the last of the British forces on Maltese soil. An icon of the Greek anti-fascist resistance, Theodorakis had been arrested by the country's Italian and German occupiers for his in- volvement in left-wing resistance groups. He also opposed the military junta which took power in 1967, whose ordinances included a complete ban on the composer's music. Theodorakis went into hid- ing, but was soon arrested, and jailed in the infamous "re-edu- cation" camp on the small island of Makronissos near Athens. As a result of severe beatings and torture, Theodorakis suffered respiratory problems, which plagued his health for the rest of his life. In prison he suffered tuberculo- sis, was thrown into a psychiatric hospital, and was even subjected to mock executions. Following his release, he was commissioned by Dom Mintoff to compose the "Innu lil Malta" for the occasion of the closure of all British military bases on 31 March, 1979. The manuscript on which the hymn was written was recently posted by the National Archives. included a note written in Greek stating: "The composition was done at Vrachati on 27 August 1979 with the mediation of the mayor of Athens and in consultation with the government of Malta. I have chosen, on purpose and symbol- ically, the paper which I had in Averoff Prisons. The red signature of the Director of Prisons served as a permission that I could write music." With the fall of the dictatorship in 1974, Theodorakis returned to Greece a hero. He served as MP for the Greek Communist Party during the 1980s. But as a reaction to the corrup- tion scandals which rocked the socialist government of Andreas Papandreou, he ran as an inde- pendent candidate within the centre-right New Democracy par- ty, later serving as a minister with- out portfolio in the government of Konstantinos Mitsotakis. Later in life he spoke at rallies supporting Palestinian statehood, against the war in Iraq and against the austerity imposed by the Troi- ka. His works also included an an- them for the Palestinian Libera- tion Organization and film scores for Serpico and Z, a film based on the assassination of Greek peace activist Grigoris Lambrakis which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1969. Mikis Theodorakis 'Zorba' composer penned Freedom Day hymn for Malta Dom Mintoff got Marxist rebel Mikis Theodorakis to write hymn commemorating Malta's Freedom Day in 1979