Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1426475
9 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 NOVEMBER 2021 NEWS MATTHEW AGIUS AN Italian man is suing Bank of Valletta for closing his account and refusing to release his funds for over six years since a 2015 report of fraud that was never followed up with police or court action. Last March, Alberto Maurizio Re filed a sworn application against BOV, arguing that the bank was refusing to release €271,253 in funds he kept at the bank. Maurizio Re claims to have received the money as a pay- ment for services rendered to a certain Igor Zui, a Russian na- tional. Sometime after receiv- ing the funds, Romanian bank Raiffeisen, which had sent the funds on behalf of Zui, request- ed a recall of the money due to an allegation of fraud by its cli- ent. Maurizio Re received a letter from the bank in June 2015 in- forming him that it would not release the money and asking him to contact it. His account was blocked, and refused to allow him to access his money pending an investigation. Maurizio Re says he provided an explanation for the funds, and that Zui had never spoken to Maurizio Re about the mat- ter. Zui is thought to have come to Malta to file both a complaint with BOV as well as a police re- port about the matter in 2015. However, no further action was taken and no civil or criminal proceedings were ever filed in this regard to date, six years later. In 2020, with his account still blocked due to pending investigations by BOV, Maur- izio Re engaged a Maltese law firm to request an update from the bank. No formal reply was forthcoming. In view of the lack of reply, Maurizio Re instructed his lawyers to file a judicial pro- test. Not long after that, BOV sent him a letter, informing him that they were closing his account and requesting him to advise where to send the funds. He instructed his lawyers to in- form the bank to send the funds either to his lawyers or to his accountant, who represented him as his mandatory in Malta. The bank, however, refused, saying it would not accept in- structions from his lawyers. In their reply to the court case, the bank explained that its re- fusal to deposit the funds in a third-party account was to avoid falling foul of anti-money laundering regulations. BOV has said it had not been informed by the authorities about any proceedings filed against the plaintiff by Zui or Raiffeisen Bank, and that it proposed to release the funds to Maurizio Re personally, but not to a third-party account. This position had since changed, with a bank repre- sentative recently confirming in court that the bank would not release the funds unless there is a court judgment or- dering their disbursement. The representative testified that the foreign bank never provided any further information after the 2015 claim, and that BOV was never contacted again by Zui or the foreign bank. Maurizio Re's lawyers Ryan Falzon and Jonathan Thomp- son argue that the bank had abusively decided to ignore their former client's instruc- tions, causing him serious fi- nancial difficulties which led to a judicial sale by auction of his residence in Italy. Italian wants €270,000 released to his mandatory, but bank fears anti-money laundering breach BOV cash freeze challenged in court The bank will not release the funds unless there is a court judgment ordering their disbursement Seaview hotel also wants its piece of Bugibba beach JAMES DEBONO THE Seaview hotel in Buġibba is requesting a permit to erect a timber platform for 35 sunbeds across a 155sq.m stretch of rocky coastline neat a small sandy beach and a public wa- ter-park, opposite the hotel. The platform, proposed by Isaac Vella's Angelo Catering Ltd, will cordon of the rest of the beach with planters, with a 15m distance retained between the private area and the sea. A tunnel already connects the ho- tel to the beach. The applicants do not own the site, which is govern- ment-owned, but they have been authorised to carry out the proposed development. In 2017 the Environment and Resources Authority objected to a more extensive, 50-sunbed area requested as a 'beach con- cession' in plans for the hotel's redevelopment. The ERA then said the sunbeds would take up the remaining coastline for intensified com- mercial activity, contributing to "further environmental degra- dation and formalisation of this coastal area", apart from being "unacceptable from an environ- mental point of view". The area where the sunbeds are being proposed is within the development zone but is pro- tected as a "safeguarded area" where only minor embellish- ment works can be approved. The area was formally used for a seasonal dodgem lu- na-park, covered by temporary permits, until the PA refused to renew the permit in 2012. The area was then turned into a wa- ter-park. An unrelated application has also been submitted to erect a floating pontoon with three mooring points, adjacent to the Serena beach lido. The PA also recently sanc- tioned the relocation of a bar from the San Antonio Hotel's Nine Lives lido, originally sited on the periphery, to a sunbed area right in the middle of the public Buġibba perched beach.