Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/826629
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 21 MAY 2017 3 News Four inquiries now ongoing CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 It is highly likely that a fifth inquiry be appointed over the complaint Opposition leader Si- mon Busuttil took to Magistrate Aaron Bugeja – who heads the original inquiry into the Egrant allegations – against Keith Schembri, whom Busuttil ac- cused of money laundering over payments made to the former Allied Group managing direc- tor Adrian Hillman since before Schembri entered politics. Busuttil on Friday claimed that the magisterial inquiry into the leaks of FIAU documents had taken place after a police report by the Prime Minister and Keith Schembri. But both Muscat and Schembri denied having made the police report, and yesterday Busuttil made only the slightest of retreats, saying that the in- quiry "must" have been launched at Muscat's instigation. But this latest, fourth investiga- tion has turned out to have been made on a complaint of the same FIAU. The third inquiry was kicked off after a complaint by Pilatus Bank to the police over the leak of bank- ing documents. Times journalist Jacob Borg and the Malta Inde- pendent's manager Pierre Portelli, who reported the contents of the reports, have already appeared be- fore the magistrate and refused to reveal their sources. Malta remains in the grip of un- answered questions after Prime Minister Joseph Muscat requested a magisterial inquiry into allega- tions by Malta Independent col- umnist Daphne Caruana Galizia that his wife Michelle was the owner of a secret offshore com- pany, Egrant. Magistrate Aaron Bugeja's in- quiry is expected to establish whether or not a bank account belonging to Egrant or the Mus- cats existed at Pilatus Bank, where Caruana Galizia said that over $1 million had been transferred into this account by Leyla Aliyeva, the daughter of Azerabaijani ruler Il- ham Aliyev. While Pilatus Bank has denied the existence of such an account, it has offered full access to Mag- istrate Bugeja into their IT plat- form. Muscat has called the alle- gation "the biggest political lie in history" and has challenged Simon Busuttil to take responsibility for the "calumny" when the magiste- rial inquiry is over. But the revelations emanated from the declarations of a Russian national, who worked with Pilatus Bank for two months before she was sacked. While the Russian na- tional is suing the bank for unpaid wages, the police have charged the woman with misappropriation of the bank's funds when she han- dled travel arrangements for exec- utives, and in separate charges for making false accusations against her arresting officers. Magistrate Natasha Galea Sciberras is also investigating an- other complaint, this time allega- tions brought by PN leader Simon Busuttil, of a €100,000 kickback ostensibly paid into Keith Schem- bri's Pilatus bank account by Nexia BT's managing partner Brian Tonna through his offshore company Willerby Trade, which he used to retain fees for services related to the sale of Maltese citi- zenship. The accusations emanate from the preliminary report that Man- fred Galdes, the former FIAU di- rector, had penned in a report to Commissioner of Police Michael Cassar in April 2016, before the latter resigned without an investi- gation taking place. Busuttil has now taken new graft allegations, specifically over some €650,000 in transactions made be- tween Keith Schembri and Adrian Hillman in the period between 2006 and 2015, through Schem- bri's company in Gibraltar as well as a Swiss bank account. At the time, Schembri's Kasco Group was the supplier of newsprint to the Allied Group's Progress Press, which was headed by Hillman. On Friday Busuttil suggested that these payments were made for "editorial and printing services" at the Times, which is published by Allied Newspapers. A similar claim had been made last year before the publication of the Panama Papers, when senior editors at The Times declared that at no point were they told what or what not to write by Hillman. An internal inquiry by Allied, headed by judge Giovanni Bonello, remained unpublished after a pri- vate agreement was reached with Hillman to withdraw litigation. Busuttil: 'Complaint by Muscat's puppet' Earlier yesterday, PN leader Si- mon Busuttil said that a criminal complaint against the people who exposed the alleged kickbacks by Keith Schembri to Adrian Hillman must have been filed "by a puppet of Joseph Muscat". Responding to journalists' ques- tions at a press conference in Qormi, Busuttil said that he had not personally seen the criminal complaint he had spoken about on Friday but deduced that the Prime Minister's hand must have been be- hind it. "I certainly didn't file the com- plaint to the duty magistrate my- self, and neither did anyone from PN or PD, so who else could it have been?" he wondered. "I would im- agine that Muscat would have been smart enough not to write it him- self, so it must have been one of his puppets." "I never said that Muscat had filed the criminal complaint himself, but that he had used it to intimidate those people who were courageous enough to come to me with the information," he said. "To those people, I tell them to hold out un- til 3 June, when they will be treated as heroes and not as victims, and when criminals will be investigated and treated as the criminals they are." Simon Busuttil