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Newspaper post YOUR FIRST READ AND FIRST CLICK OF THE DAY WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT €1.40 No justice without access FREE WITH MALTATODAY RUTH FARRUGIA Money laundering investigation was not pursued when Fenech Adami's name cropped up PGS 12-13 SUNDAY • 9 OCTOBER 2016 • ISSUE 883 • PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY YOUR FIRST READ AND FIRST CLICK OF THE DAY WWW.MALTATODAY.COM.MT SUNDAY • SUNDAY • 9 OCTOBER 2016 • ISSUE 883 9 OCTOBER 2016 • ISSUE 883 • PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY • PUBLISHED EVERY WEDNESDAY AND SUNDAY maltatoday Pippa Mattei's great recipes FREE WITH MALTATODAY Ulster breakfasts, fi sh in Guinness batter, apricot tarts and more Irish delights As Malta entered a general election, in January 2013 an investigation into alleged money laundering following a Dutch drug bust failed to gather steam: Beppe Fenech Adami, the parliamentary assistant for home affairs, was a director of the Maltese fiduciary company which police investigators said was handling the transactions for a company that could have been used by the suspected drug traffickers. MaltaToday has seen evidence that Dutch prosecutors say they were not given, and which they claim could have been withheld from them. A police investigation in January 2013 that raised the spectre of money laun- dering was never pursued by the Mal- tese police, ostensibly when the name of Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Ada- mi cropped up as one of the directors of a fiduciary services company that handled the affairs of CapitalOne In- vestment Group - the company under investigation. Acting on a Dutch request for assis- tance, Maltese police were looking in- to the banking transactions of Capital- One, a company connected to Robert Soogea, a Dutchman whose property was raided by police in a drug bust. In an investigation carried out jointly by MaltaToday and freelance journal- ist Mark Hollingsworth, sources privy to the Dutch investigation expressed frustration that not all evidence con- nected to banking transactions by CapitalOne were passed on to them by the Maltese police. Both Beppe Fenech Adami and Rob- ert Abdilla Castillo – directors of Bal- timore Fiduciary, which acted as the nominee company that 'owned' Capi- talOne's shares – have denied know- ing anything of this investigation, even though an asset freeze was ordered at the request of the Dutch police. At the time, Fenech Adami was par- liamentary assistant for home affairs. He has denied having been spoken to about this case by police at the time. MaltaToday understands that the as- set freeze carried out by the Maltese police for the Dutch, would have re- quired a court order. But the court order does not appear on the public registry of the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit. Maltese police found that Bank of Valletta had issued Visa gold credit cards in the name of suspect Robert Soogea and his associates, and that CapitalOne was used to receive mil- lions in cash, some of which was de- posited in a Valletta Fund Manage- ment account, and then dispensed to pay off Soogea's expenses and to acquire share capital in various Greek companies – almost all of these com- panies are dissolved today. When investigators pieced together a report for police top brass on 13 Janu- ary, the CapitalOne file was marked 'BU – 3 months' – bring up in three months – on 31 January. By April 2013, the Dutch had dropped their charges due to lack of evidence, and in De- cember 2013, the CapitalOne file was marked 'PU' – 'put away'. No justice without access FARRUGIA Money laundering investigation 14-15 Matthew Vella and Mark Hollingsworth MALTATODAY SPECIAL REPORT SPECIAL REPORT