Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/817563
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 30 APRIL 2017 2 News MATTHEW AGIUS THE Nationalist Party yesterday said it was confident more govern- ment corruption scandals would emerge in the coming days. Deputy leader Beppe Fenech Adami told a press conference that the magisterial inquiry investigat- ing allegations that the Prime Min- ister's wife owned a secret offshore company, had heard a whistle- blower testifying for three hours on the allegations. The whistleblower is believed to be a former Pilatus Bank employee, and according to the allegations first published by Malta Independ- ent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia, a declaration of trust pre- sented to the bank by auditor Brian Tonna would have stated that Mi- chelle Muscat was the beneficial owner of Egrant. The document, said by Caruana Galizia to have been "scanned and uploaded to the cloud", has not yet been published. "Over the past few days, we heard stories of transfers of millions of euros from an account at Pilatus Bank into a Dubai account that was owned by Egrant," Fenech Ad- ami said yesterday. "Apart from this, in the past few days there was the publication of declarations of trust, which in- dicate black on white the wife of the Prime Minister as the person in whose name shares were being held in Egrant in Panama." Fenech Adami was referring to the text reproduced on Caruana Galizia's website, of the content of the declaration of trust. Fenech Adami also set much store by the fact that three Pana- manian companies – Egrant, Till- gate and Hearnville – had been set up by the same people, using the same structures as revealed in the Panama Papers leaks. He said he was "confident that more scandals would emerge in the coming days." Schembri allegations Fenech Adami also said that Mal- ta's sale of citizenship, the Individ- ual Investor Programme, was com- plicit in money laundering, after Opposition leader Simon Busuttil accused the PM's chief of staff, Keith Schembri, of having received €100,000 from Nexia BT managing partner Brian Tonna. According to Busuttil's allega- tions, Tonna had just received fees from three successful Russian ap- plicants for a Maltese passport in his offshore company Willerby Trade, when he then paid the €100,000 into Schembri's bank ac- count at Pilatus Bank. Schembri has denied the allega- tion, saying the payment was for a loan he made to Tonna in 2012. Busuttil has presented his evidence to Magistrate Aaron Bugeja, who is leading the Egrant inquiry, while Schembri said he would cooperate with any investigation into the al- legations. "The Maltese people understand that the situation in the country is a grave one and I appeal to people to continue to come forward to re- veal the truth, to reveal the corrup- tion of the thieving gang at Castille. I repeat the party leader's appeal to encourage such people to come forward. "The PN from now, at all costs, will protect those who come for- ward to reveal the large scale cor- ruption in the country," Fenech Adami said, adding that Joseph Muscat's position as Prime Minis- ter was no longer tenable. Shadow Justice Minister Jason Azzopardi expressed his disgust about Muscat, who he said was try- ing to discredit the whistleblower using third parties. "Castille has become a den of thieves," Azzo- pardi said, saying it was "shocking" to attempt to undermine the evi- dence of a whistleblower in such a serious corruption scandal. Whistleblower reports Reports in both Illum online and the Times of Malta yesterday said the whistleblower in question was a Russian national who had worked as an intern with Pilatus Bank, which is based at Whitehall Mansions in Ta' Xbiex. The bank filed a complaint against the woman at the Msida police station in March 2016, ac- cusing her of defrauding the com- pany by using company money to book holidays for her family while being entrusted to make flight ar- rangements for Pilatus staff. It was also said that the woman had claimed she had not been paid money due to her by the bank. The Pilatus Bank complaint was signed by the bank's lawyer, Joe Giglio, and in August 2016 the woman was charged in court by inspectors Jonathan Ferris and Lara Butters of theft and fraud to the detriment of Pilatus Bank, and travel agency Enrico Travel. She has denied the charges. The woman volunteered to tes- tify in front of inquiring magis- trate Aaron Bugeja on Friday after Caruana Galizia reported the fact on her website, saying she did so with the woman's permission. Caruana Galizia's original story was that documents proved Mi- chelle Muscat was the beneficial owner of shares in Egrant, an al- legation that the Prime Minister and his wife had denied. According to Caruana Galizia the documents were held in a kitchen safe at Pi- latus Bank, and that Egrant held a bank account and received a de- posit of $1 million from the daugh- ter of the Azerbaijani president to be paid into Egrant's account in Dubai. TCU denies 'reopened' case The Tax Compliance Unit yester- day also denied that they had reo- pened an inquiry involving Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna, after it emerged that ac- counts at Pilatus Bank might have been used for kickbacks. The denial was made after the Times of Malta reported that a pre- vious audit had been completed but had only inspected BOV and HSBC accounts, and not Pilatus accounts. But the TCU dubbed the allega- tions "unfounded and purely specu- lative" and that this did not reflect the way in which such cases are in- vestigated. "The Tax Compliance Unit con- firms that no audit cases were closed and reopened. Following reports carried by the media specu- lating about investigations carried out by the TCU, both the Com- missioner for Revenue and Direc- tor General Tax Compliance Unit reiterate that the tax authorities do not comment on the outcomes of individual cases. In the case of the Panama leaks, the tax authorities have already informed the media that investigations on each case are underway, as per regular prac- tices whenever a possible breach is flagged, publicly or otherwise." PN 'confident more corruption scandals will emerge' Whistleblower testifies in Egrant magisterial inquiry, police had charged former Pilatus Bank intern with fraud in 2016 Beppe Fenech Adami (centre) addressing the news conference with Jason Azzopardi and election candidate Roselyn Borg Pilatus Bank operates from Whitehall Mansions