Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1501168
3 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 11 JUNE 2023 NEWS NICOLE MEILAK SEVERAL news reports have cropped up in recent weeks alleg- ing bribery towards former FMS CEO Carmen Ciantar in the VGH hospitals deal. The reports are appearing al- most exclusively in Pakistani me- dia, and each website is publishing the same exact news article word- for-word. Daily Pakistan, Samaa English TV, The Pakistan Daily, Global Village Space, Dunya News and Pakistan Observer all reported the allegations on 31 May. They kick off the story with the fact that Ram Tumuluri's company recent- ly signed a Rs2,800-crore deal to supply e-buses to Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport and warns that he is facing fresh allegations of corruption involv- ing Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne's office. MaltaToday is informed that an unnamed international public re- lations company had been trying, through intermediaries, to offer the Ciantar story to Maltese me- dia organisations. The effort failed since the claims could not be sub- stantiated. Obscure Pakistani news sites Sources in Pakistan have told MaltaToday that Daily Pakistan is not widely read in the country. "It has no standing or existence here. It hardly exists even in Pakistan," they said. While it has an English-language news site, its newspaper is only presented online in Urdu. Attempts to reach Daily Pakistan over the story were unsuccessful. The article was unsigned. Sources also told MaltaTo- day that Global Village Space is no longer in print, but its online portal is being regularly updated. However, its owner, Moeed Pirza- da fled the country after the fall of Pakistan's former prime minister Imran Khan. Another report surfaced on 8 June on all the Pakistani outlets. The report makes reference to alleged documentary evidence showing that a company linked to VGH made several suspicious payments to Ciantar between 2015 and 2016. The article goes into more de- tail over the payments structure. It says that Glotal Finance Inc, which received payments linked to Ciantar, was wholly owned by Dahlia Investments Ltd, a compa- ny based in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Weird FATF reference A separate news article reported by Global Village Space, The Na- tion and Daily Pakistan explained the Steward Health Care an- nounced that it will be pulling out of Malta after a court rescinded its concession to run three govern- ment hospitals. However, this news report claims that the development comes "shortly after the FATF put Malta on the grey list after iden- tifying serious structural deficien- cies in Malta's governance and regulation". Malta had been placed on the FATF grey list in 2021 due to de- ficiencies in the fight against tax evasion and the way ultimate ben- eficiary owners are listed. How- ever, Malta was taken off the list a year later, making the reference to FATF for Steward's withdrawal sound incongruent to the facts at hand. Steward announced its with- drawal from Malta earlier this year after a judge rescinded the hospi- tals contract because of fraud and unfulfilled milestones. The Amer- ican company has appealed the decision. Ukrainian site inaccessible from Malta Apart from Pakistan, a news re- port also surfaced on Ukrainian website censor.net. The report says that an Austria-based busi- nessman with close links to Rus- sian oligarch Leonid Levitin wired €3.2 million to Carmen Ciantar's daughter, Celine. She has wholly denied the allegation. Ukrainian journalist Tetiana Nikolayenko said that Leonid Levitin's Maltese passport is un- der scrutiny in view of the suspi- cious payment. She said Fearne was a close as- sociate of Jonathan Cardona, who headed the golden passport pro- gramme at the time. But the re- port gives short shrift to the fact that Cardona, if anything, was in former prime minister Joseph Muscat's close circle of confi- dantes and had nothing to do with Fearne. According to Nikolayenko, an agreement between the parties saw Levitin receive a Maltese passport after Rezchikov allegedly transferred €3.2 million in 2019. However, the article and website is unavailable in Malta, and acces- sible only with a VPN. EU Reporter pulls down article This article was later reprinted in the EU Reporter. Colin Stevens, editor-in-chief at EU Reporter, told MaltaToday that the article was sent to them by the author, with no payment made or re- ceived from the author by the me- diahouse. However, the article has since been temporarily removed from the EU Reporter after Celine Camilleri Ciantar issued a right of reply to the mediahouse in which she denied all the allegations, in- cluding knowing the people men- tioned in the report. "The article has been tempo- rarily removed whilst we carry out enhanced fact checks," Ste- vens said. Carmen Ciantar's bribery allegations: Where are they coming from?