Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/440087
maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 31 DECEMBER 2014 3 Nolle Prosequi "A criminal case does not bring you back a dead person…" These were the harrowing words uttered by the former Attorney General, Anthony Borg Barthet, in a radio interview when asked about his decision to bury criminal proce- dures against a medical consult- ant in the case of the late Andrea Massa, a seven-year-old Naxxar boy who died after a series of un- forgivable medical blunders. An Attorney General in Malta is obliged on the one hand to advise the State, but he also has an obligation to prosecute. Over the last ten years former Attorney General Anthony Borg Barthet, now appointed by the government as a judge in the European Court of Justice, had applied his unique – if debatable – right to stop criminal proce- dures by applying what is known in legal jargon as Nolle Prosequi. If he decides to shelve a case there is no right of appeal against his decision. Nolle Prosequi allows an Attorney General to be the jury, the judge, the appeals court and the Chief Justice. During the last ten years this right has been applied on seven occasions, and the most shock- ing application of the privilege was the decision to shelve legal procedures against a medical consultant at St Luke's hospital accused of the unlawful homi- cide of Andrea Massa. 9 January, 2005 Price Club ECHOING many similarities with the Parmalat scandal and the En- ron and Worldcom fiascos in the US, the Price Club supermarket saga turned out to be one of the greatest bankruptcy cases in Mal- tese history. Reading like the best of Holly- wood finance thrillers, an auditor's report revealed by MaltaToday showed how Price Club's own- ers had fabricated accounts and figures that offered a misleading picture of Price Club and diverted funds from the operation into their personal accounts whilst the com- pany, which ran six outlets, was left with thousands in creditors' debts and bank loans. In one particular transaction, the family of one of the owners received Lm1.4 million in cash proceeds from a BOV bank loan, which had been borrowed by Price Club Operations Ltd, and then left the company with the burden of paying back the loan. Even more damaging was how the company, which held millions of liri in stock, never kept any stock records or carried out stock- takes to establish its stock value. Stock figures were revealed to have been fabricated to accom- modate the owners' wishes, who would enter fictitiously higher values for year-end stocks, enough to show an operating profit at the end of the year. 18 December, 2004 BICAL Bank THE BICAL bank was closed down by the Mintoff government in 1972 under the contrived premise that it was bankrupt. Despite the entire BI- CAL group of companies having had enough assets to pay off any debts, the company has been kept under government controllership for the past 34 years. In the process, the companies were vengefully sold off for a pittance. Owner Cecil Pace became the focus of MaltaToday's series that revisited the BICAL saga. "I had been asked to accept to become deputy leader of the Labour party," Pace claimed, recalling his relationship with Labour leader Dom Mintoff. "Not being politically minded, I rejected the offer. Soon I was approached with the proposal to sign away half my equities to nominees and I would be rewarded with 'choicy' contracts for my com- panies while my bank would handle government accounts and permits to open branches all over the island. "None of these proposals inter- ested me, but I was told better agree than go to jail. I asked on what grounds and I was told that reasons would be found. I was arrested, on the pretext that I stole, by devious means, all the monies deposited and hence a controller was to take over all my assets to protect all deposi- tors, creditors and shareholders." 7 September, 2003 15 Years 2003 2004 2005 Mintoff and the National Bank MALTATODAY revisited the run on the National Bank of Malta of 1973, starting with a massive with- drawal of Lm900,000 that forced an NBM emergency meeting to deter- mine whether it had enough liquid assets. The saga was to bring back the harrowing experience of the share- holders of Malta's largest private bank, at the mercy of then prime minister Dom Mintoff, in a meet- ing with him, his finance minister Guze Abela, Central Bank governor R.J.A. Earland, Lino Spiteri and At- torney General Edgar Mizzi. Mintoff, claiming he wanted to protect the bank from further runs, laid down his cards – he wanted the bank and demanded that the shares be transferred to the government, threatening that otherwise he would close the bank. But Mintoff also refused to let the NBM obtain bridging finance from other banks, such as the Midland Bank, the NatWest, or Barclay's Bank – and the Central Bank did not offer any finance to allay fears of bankruptcy. Shareholders were forced over- night to sign off their shares to the government. Mintoff had famously quipped in parliament that the shares would be transferred "natu- rally without compensation" – the court case for compensation of the shareholders is still ongoing today. The NBM subsequently became the Bank of Valletta, a government- owned bank. 7 December, 2003 Racism A handful of soldiers dressed in civilian clothes were among a 200- strong crowd who attended a racist rally in Safi addressed by far-right exponent Norman Lowell, in the wake of the Safi barracks' incident when soldiers beat up a group of asylum seekers who were protest- ing peacefully. An acerbic Lowell used the meeting to attack Maltese politi- cians for betraying their country. Using racist slurs such as " black ink " and " black coal " to describe asylum seekers, Lowell praised the Armed Forces and described the crowd in front of him as Malta's "new iron soldiers." Ignoring centuries of mixed breeding between Maltese nationals and foreigners, Lowell described the Maltese nation as Europe's purest. In the process he denigrated EU Commissioner Franco Frattini for proposing that Malta should have its own refugee camp. "I will poke him in the eye when I meet him," Lowell said. The gathering in Safi 's main vil- lage square was attended mostly by youngsters dressed in black, some sporting the Maltese f lag on their shoulder. Among the crowd were a group of Armed Forces personnel dressed in civilian clothes up to their ears to hide their identit y. 23 January, 2005