Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1467738
12 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 15 MAY 2022 NEWS MATTHEW VELLA BANK of Valletta may have drawn an expensive, €182 million line under Italy's biggest shipping scandal. But its shareholders are up in arms about the bank's cavalier approach to its major litigation cases, which have raised questions about the way Bank of Valletta has dealt with its shareholders, investors as well as accusers. In the last decade, BOV's top manage- ment, CEOs and politically-appointed chairmen (the Maltese government re- tains a 25% stake in the bank) have been held up to a harsh light with the €80 million La Valette Property Fund set- tlement, the €26.5 million paid to fend off the Swedish 'Falcon Funds' pensions headache, and now, an unprecedent- ed settlement with Italian bondholders from a village in southern Italy, whose investment in a shipping giant was fraud- ulently placed in a BOV trust. For years on end, BOV played down the complaints and representations of those who challenged it on its investment mis- haps: the stockbroker Paul Bonello sin- gle-handedly forced the bank into settle- ment with La Valette fund investors after incessant pressure on the sluggish MF- SA; the lack of due diligence on Falcon Funds became a misadventure brought about by a conman who bled a private pension dry; and now the Deiulemar mystery, where over €360 million in in- vestors' cash was moved into a banking trust. Now the bank is adding insult to injury with a remote AGM that will allow them to forestall and dodge shareholders' loud complaints on shredded dividends and share prices. But some observers watch this poor show with wry reflection. To Jeremy Cassar Torregiani, who grew up in the shadow of the National Bank of Malta's forced nationalisation by the Mintoff administration in 1973 – a takeover that induced a fatal heart attack for his grandfather, director and shareholder Frank Cassar Torregiani – the BOV out- of-court settlement is a wound that cuts very deep. It was only in 2014 that a Maltese court ruled, for the second time, that the Na- tional Bank's forcible nationalisation had violated its owners' rights, in a case filed by 30 shareholders who back in 1973 had refused to sign over their shares to the government. Seven years later however, the Maltese law courts are yet to con- clude what the amount of damages to be awarded to the shareholders is. The wronged side is claiming over €360 mil- lion in compensation. "The matter drags on in front of the Maltese courts as it has for 50 years. The partial judgement won also under appeal has yet to deliver a remedy leaving the defrauded shareholders frustrated by the operations of the 'mafia state'," Cassar Torregiani says, who despite his family pedigree as Malta's former banking mag- nates, views his family as having been spat out by the political establishment that followed from the 1970s onwards. "Similarly, the Deiulmar saga defraud- ing shareholders of their dividends with- out the responsible people facing conse- quences, is yet another example of the corruption that has plagued our islands, pushing her every more closely towards a mafia state," he says. Cassar Torregiani thinks the 'mafia state' is still at work, by preventing the National Bank of Malta shareholders from claiming their rightful dues. "The shareholders, the press and the in- stitutions that are upset about the conse- quences of the Deiulemar fiasco, should realise that without the protection of the mafia state a similar fate awaits them, in the value of the whole bank which is the claim made by the shareholders in the National Bank of Malta for the full restitution of the Bank to its legitimate shareholders." For Cassar Torregiani, whose family suffered the forced nationalisation of the bank and was locked in a 50-year court BOV's Deiulemar pay-out hits raw nerve for National Bank shareholders still awaiting justice Jeremy Cassar Torregiani, one of the scions of the directors and shareholders of the former National Bank of Malta, has a target on the back of Bank of Valletta. Despite winning their claim for fair compensation, seven years have passed since the last judgement and no Maltese court has yet decided on the damages for the forced nationalisation of the NBM. The Deiulemar settlement only pours salt on this historic wound... "Without the protection of the mafia state a similar fate awaits them, in the value of the whole bank which is the claim made by the shareholders in the National Bank of Malta for the full restitution of the Bank to its legitimate shareholders" Jeremy Cassar Torregiani