Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/736806
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 9 OCTOBER 2016 12 News I t was on 13 January, 2013, when a police inspector's report into a case of alleged money laundering landed in the lap of assistant commissioner Michael Cassar. Malta was then in the throes of a heated general election campaign where the incumbent Nationalist government was facing negative poll ratings. Lawrence Gonzi's government had been forced to call elections after his tenuous one-seat majority lost a budgetary vote in the preceding December. What Michael Cassar now read in a report from inspector Raymond Aquilina, who had been tasked with handling an asset-freezing request from Dutch investigators, seemed to spell trouble. "Having conducted what has been requested by the Dutch authorities… enquiries in the fiduciary company 'Baltimore' and its directors [of] whom one is a PEP" – politically ex- posed person – "papers are being referred… for onward ref- erence to Europol office through ACSB [assistant commis- sioner special branch] and as deemed necessary, please." That PEP, it turned out, was Beppe Fenech Adami, the then parliamentary assistant for home affairs, handling the home affairs portfolio for Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, as well as being the son of the erstwhile President and for- mer prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami. He was listed as a director of a fiduciary services company – Baltimore Fiduci- ary Services – that acted as the nominee shareholder for a suspicious entity called CapitalOne Investment Group. CapitalOne's ultimate beneficiary owner – Dutch police said – was a Dutch poker player called Robert Soogea, whom Amsterdam police had arrested and questioned in a drug bust weeks before. But in an investigation carried out by MaltaToday and freelance journalist Mark Hollingsworth, sources privy to both sides of the investigation have said that a whole body of evidence – chiefly banking transactions that showed suspi- cious movements of large amounts – were never passed on to Dutch investigators. These large deposits and payouts to other companies, sometimes hundreds of thousands of euros passing daily into a Bank of Valletta and Valletta Fund Management ac- count, were carried out by Baltimore Fiduciary's owner and director Richard Abdilla Castillo, ostensibly on instructions of CapitalOne's Dutch owners. A fiduciary services company 'moving' money for someone who had been arrested by Dutch prosecutors in connection with drug trafficking allegations should have rung alarm bells. Instead, neither police nor the office of the Maltese Attorney General seemed eager to take this police investiga- tion forward: certainly, not during the 2013 elections. Beppe Fenech Adami's position as parliamentary assis- tant responsible for home affairs, was one of the positions that had been created by Lawrence Gonzi a year earlier for his disgruntled MPs. Fenech Adami had been seconded to Carm Mifsud Bonnici's home affairs ministry back in Janu- ary 2012, but by the time the minister had resigned in a con- fidence vote, Fenech Adami was tasked with 'running the show' for Gonzi, who had absorbed the home affairs minis- try. Fenech Adami was a de facto 'minister for police'. But he has denied categorically to MaltaToday ever knowing of the CapitalOne investigation. On 20 January, the political landscape was also hit by Mal- taToday's revelations on the Enemalta oil scandal, instantly kick-starting a police investigation into allegations of brib- ery for the procurement of fuel. As the Gonzi administra- tion, the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Police agonised over issuing a presidential pardon for rogue oil trader George Farrugia to turn State's evidence, a decision also had to be taken whether the suspect transactions inside CapitalOne Invest- ment Group should be investigated. And it was only weeks since the Dalligate investigation had kicked off into a multi-million bribe solicited by a man allegedly on behalf of John Dalli, the former EU commissioner. But the CapitalOne evidence was sufficient enough to be forwarded to Europol, as the police inspector signing off the report told his superiors: these were big money movements being carried out for a company connected to men suspect- ed of drug trafficking, by a nominee company whose job was to hide the identity of an ultimate beneficial owner. On 31 January, police top brass took a final look at the CapitalOne/Baltimore file and wrote "BU in 3 months" – bring up in three months. That investigation would have to be dealt with by the powers that be once the March general election was over, it seemed. But that investigation would stop dead in its tracks. The Dutch, as angry prosecutors later found out, never received the banking documents that showed the trail of suspicious transactions carried out for CapitalOne Investment. When their case fell in April 2013, ostensibly due to lack of evi- dence, the Maltese did not pursue the money laundering in- vestigations. And in December 2013, the police put the case aside, as it were, with a final note marking the file as "PU" – put away. On 17 January, 2014, Beppe Fenech Adami – now the PN's deputy leader for party affairs – resigned as director of Balti- more Fiduciary Services. Dutch drug bust and freezing request O n 21 November, 2012, a request for mutual cooperation came through to the Maltese police from the Amsterdam public prosecutor after evidence had been found in several properties about a network of companies, one of which was CapitalOne Investment, involved in a suspected trafficking network. In the course of a criminal investigation, police had raided an Amsterdam residence, where suspect Henrique Regilio Cumberbatch, originally of Suriname, had been staying. A quantity of soft drugs, amounting to not more than 100g, was found here. "This is news to me", the owner of Baltimore Fiduciary Services told MaltaToday, insisting that he was not aware of any investigation or asset freeze. "I was never informed by police. I wasn't 100% involved in it... I did sign its affairs but the details you ask me of happened some time ago." Abdilla Castillo said he had no idea that the company's UBO had been arrested in a drugs raid. "We have removed the company," he said of the recent sale of CapitalOne to Ioannis Moustos. "As a fiduciary we haven't traded for some time now and some workers had left. We were running down other companies. "I wasn't hands-on. I'm a director... but there were other people taking care of it. "I never received any notification from the police or the bank [of the asset freeze]." Abdilla Castillo also said that although Fenech Adami was a director he was not involved in the company. Richard Abdilla Castillo 12 News When Dutch police raided the homes of Robert Soogea (left) and Henrique Cumberbatch (right) they found drugs, thousands in cash, and papers showing Soogea was the owner of Senoblema Trading, a company holding 250,000 shares in CapitalOne Investment Group of Malta, and a BOV Visa gold card. Suspecting him of involvement in drug trafficking, the Dutch asked the Maltese to freeze his Malta companies. In the subsequent investigation, police found that Capitalone was owned by a nominee company, Baltimore Fiduciary, whose directors included Beppe Fenech Adami - then a parliamentary assistant for home affairs. The question is: why was the investigation not pursued? Sources close to the Dutch investigation insist they were not handed all the evidence found in Malta of what they believe, could have led them to investigate further. And although Maltese police requested a freeze on CapitalOne's interests, the directors of Baltimore - which ran the company's affairs - insist they were never informed of the asset freeze. CapitalOne: the side-lined police investigation? whether the suspect transactions inside CapitalOne Invest- ment Group should be investigated. weeks since the The police investigation handed to Michael Cassar had named Richard Abdilla Castillo and Beppe Fenech Adami as the two co-directors of Baltimore Fiduciary when requesting the information be forwarded to Europol. All transactions concerning Capitalone were however always signed by Abdilla Castillo, and not Fenech Adami