Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/780138
2 maltatoday, WEDNESDAY, 1 FEBRUARY 2017 News Allied reaches agreement with Hillman Prime Minister's chief of staff Keith Schembri asks for publication of the findings of the internal inquiry into bribery allegations MATTHEW VELLA ALLIED Newspapers has reached an agreement with its former managing director, Adri- an Hillman, who had resigned his post weeks after the newspa- per group launched an internal inquiry over alleged editorial interference. Allied, publishers of the Times of Malta, had announced they were holding the inquiry in March 2016 on account of in- formation that Hillman was the owner of a British Virgin Islands company and could have re- ceived bribes from Keith Schem- bri – who in 2013 managed La- bour's election campaign and later became the Prime Minis- ter's chief of staff. Allied reached a private agree- ment with Hillman concerning "any claims they have or may have had against each other. As a result, all litigation is being withdrawn." On his part, Hillman thanked the company "for the opportuni- ty given to [me] to serve as man- aging director, satisfied that the matter has come to a positive close." The findings of the inquiry, headed by judge Giovanni Bonello, were not published. Keith Schem- bri issued a statement in reaction to the news, saying that the result proved that there was no wrongdoing from his business group as had been alleged. "The dishonest and highly po- liticised campaign against me personally has been proved to be base- less. Now that this matter has been resolved, for the sake of trans- parency, I urge Allied News- papers to publish the findings of its independ- ent inquiry." The inquiry stemmed from in- formation and accu- sations by The Malta Independent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who had early information on the Panama Pa- pers before it was published by the International Consortium for Investigative Journalists. The information, resulting from the Mossack Fonseca leak, was that Hillman, Schembri and developer Pierre Sladden, had a joint undertaking in offshore companies they opened in 2012. At the time of the allegations, Louis A. Farrugia, an Allied di- rector, took the step to launch the internal inquiry because of suggestions that Hillman's rela- tionship with Schembri – whose company Kasco supplied news- print to Allied – had also led to inf luencing the newspaper's agenda in the run-up to the 2013 election. The Times' editors de- nied the accusation. Hillman had claimed unfair dismissal from Allied in the course of the inquiry. In re- sponse, Allied filed a ju- dicial letter calling on Hillman to refund monies they claimed had been spent without authorization. Hillman denied the claim, say- ing the alleged transactions had been regularly registered and approved by the auditors and the board. The BVI companies As the Panama Papers scandal unfolded, documentation in the leak showed that the BVI com- panies individually owned by Keith Schembri, Pierre Sladden and Adrian Hillman were equal shareholders in a Cypriot com- pany, A2Z Consulta. The information in Caruana Galizia's hands, later published by the Australian Financial Review, led to accusations she made that Schembri had bribed Hillman to curry support for La- bour with The Times. Both Schembri and Sladden were involved in some part of the €30 million construction of Al- lied's printing press Progress in 2011: Schembri provided print- ing machinery, while Sladden Allied Newspapers withdrew claims and litigation against its former managing director, Adrian Hillman Jose Herrera libel victory confirmed on appeal MATTHEW AGIUS THE court of appeal has con- firmed the legitimacy of an arti- cle which questioned whether the fact that architect Marc Bonello, former chairman of the Malta Maritime Authority (MMA) had a conf lict of interest when his architecture firm had submitted a joint tender to the authority which Bonello happened to chair. Professor Alex Torpiano, Dion Buhagiar and Marc Bonello in their own names and as repre- sentatives of the firm TBA Per- iti had filed libel proceedings against lawyer and then Parlia- mentary Secretary for Culture and Local Government Jose Her- rera over an opinion piece titled Deep Water Quay Tender, which he had written for the Times of Malta in June 2004. The plaintiffs had felt them- selves defamed by the allegation that Bonello had tried to use his position at the MMA to favour his colleague Torpiano in an expression of interest and that Bonello had been responsible for the dismissal of Carmel Chir- cop from the MMA's legal of- fice as he had been considered a whistleblower. It also alleged that Bonello had appointed a firm of architects with which his firm had jointly entered the Cirkewwa Mgarr Terminal Project tender. The court of magistrates had dismissed the claim in October 2012, holding it to have been fair comment, asking legiti- mate questions in the interests of transparency. The first court had, however, held that these al- legations did not emerge from the article, even after repeated read- ing. It observed that Herrera had only said that "Bonello knows very well that at least two weeks ago upon his request he asked that the sitting of the industrial tribunal be postponed," which did not convey the implications about Chircop to the average reader. TBA Periti had filed an appeal, arguing amongst other things, that the first court had not ana- lysed the article in its entirety or viewed it as a whole. Herrera had submitted that the supposed allegations had not even been mentioned in the ar- ticle. Bonello had been acting in his capacity as chairman of the Malta Maritime Authority, which is a public organisation and open to criticism, Herrera argued, add- ing that the article constituted fair comment, was based on facts and had not insulted or affected the reputation of the complain- ants. In his judgement on the case, Mr Justice Anthony Ellul, pre- siding the court of Appeal, not- ed that, in 1999 and 2001, the MMA had made several public calls for tenders for consultation over the Deep Water Quay in the Grand Harbour. TBA Periti had expressed its interest jointly with CMC Ltd. He observed that Bonello had been a partner in TBA Periti as well as vice chair- man of the MMA at the time, as well as being chairman of the Capital Projects Committee. He became chairman of the MMA in 2000. Bonello himself had insisted that he had declared the con- f lict of interest whilst chairing the Capital Projects Committee. He claimed that the committee had issued a "call for registra- tion of interest" for prospective bidders and that he had stopped attending Committee meetings after Torpiano had informed him of the offer that was going to be made. Only one fact had been misre- ported, said the court. The call for expressions of interest had been reported as a call to tender. The court held that this reference was not a determining fact to the article, which it said had been in- tended to criticise how Bonello had occupied high ranking posi- tions in the authorities at a time when his firm was bidding to be awarded a consultancy. The questions and observations of the author had not exceeded the boundaries of fair comment, as Bonello had been a high-rank- ing public official at the time and therefore subject to wider criti- cism. On whether the other architects in the firm had been negatively affected by the article, the court pointed out that Bonello had been a partner in TBA Periti at the time and that the firm could not expect to escape scrutiny. With regard to the article's oblique reference to the Industri- al Tribunal case, the court of ap- peal agreed with the first court's reasoning in that the article had barely hinted as to who it was re- ferring and that it was "highly im- probable" that the average reader would understand the relevance of this to the issue at hand. Lawyer David Camilleri ap- peared for Herrera, whilst lawyer Ivan Gatt represented the appel- lants in the proceedings. Jose Herrera had submitted that the supposed allegations had not even been mentioned in the article