Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/829524
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 28 MAY 2017 4 News Schembri, Mizzi deny new allegations PAUL COCKS FRESH allegations of impropriety were published on Friday evening just 30 minutes before a caus- tic television encounter between Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Opposition leader Simon Busuttil, this time with extracts of an FIAU report reported in The Malta Inde- pendent on a Dubai company con- nected to the owners of the LNG tanker. The prime minister's chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and Konrad Mizzi, formerly energy minister, rebutted claims yesterday morning that they could have received any kickbacks – as alleged in the report – from Armada Floating Gas Ser- vices Malta, the operators of the LNG tanker. The company is one of three Ar- mada companies established at the offices of Malta firm Orion Engi- neering Group in Msida. The Armada group is subcon- tracted by ElectroGas, the com- pany that runs the Delimara gas plant, to provide the LNG tanker berthed in Marsaxlokk. According to the newspaper report, the as yet unfinished in- vestigation by the Financial Intel- ligence Analysis Unit would have revealed two attempts to transfer money from Orion Engineering, to a Dubai company called 17 Black. But the FIAU yesterday denied – through a statement issued by the Office of the Prime Minister – that any such "conclusive report" exists, or that any "conclusions as alleged" had resulted from the in- vestigation. Adding to the soup of allega- tions that have pervaded the Mal- tese election campaign so far was an unprecedented move by the Nationalist Party's media arm to publish preliminary reports and compliance reports penned by the FIAU's former director Manfred Galdes, into Pilatus Bank, Keith Schembri, Nexia BT partner Brian Tonna, and former Allied Newspa- pers director Adrian Hillman. In an interview with MaltaToday on Sunday, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat hit out at the leaks, which are prohibited under the Preven- tion of Money Laundering Act. The FIAU itself has filed a com- plaint with a duty magistrate over the publication of details from pre- liminary reports submitted to the police by the FIAU, over the Keith Schembri cases. Muscat also said that the com- pliance report on Pilatus did not include follow-up reports by the same FIAU that had cleared the bank of initial suspicions. Dubai company Attempts to contact Orion Engi- neering's director Mario Pullicino yesterday proved futile. Originally, earlier in the year Malta Independent columnist Daphne Caruana Galizia had post- ed a deliberately vague image of Muscat, Schembri and Mizzi with the title '17 Black – a company in Dubai'. The matter finally surfaced in the TMI report just before Xara- bank's debate. The newspaper reported that the FIAU "confirmed" that 17 Black's function was to transfer the money on to the Panama companies be- longing to Mizzi and Schembri, sometime in July 2015. In a post on Facebook, Keith Schembri accused Simon Busut- til of having gone "utterly over the edge". "Any contention that I have sought – or received – 'kickbacks', commissions, or any other kind of payment while in government is false," he wrote. "I have always maintained this, for it is the truth." Schembri insisted that the news report was "a fabrication nothing short of criminal." "Simon Busuttil's latest publicity stunt shows how desperate he is for power and will not think twice to put at risk the country's eco- nomic future – and our most basic principles of fairness and justice." In another statement, Konrad Mizzi said the newspaper's report was a "blatant lie", and hit out Bu- suttil saying the PN leader wanted "to win an election via the back- door of fear and smear." Mizzi said that his Panamanian company Hearnville Inc. never held a bank account in Dubai or elsewhere, which meant it could have never received any funds from any sources. JULIA FARRUGIA waħda minnkom kandidata fuq il-5 u s-7 distrett Birżebbuġa - Ħal Kirkop L-Imqabba - Ħal Farruġ Il-Qrendi - Ħal Safi - Iż-Żurrieq Il-Baħrija - Ħad-Dingli L-Imġarr - L-Imtarfa Ir-Rabat - Ħaż-Żebbuġ julia.farrugia@gmail.com | 79999936 agħmel kuntatt "Irnexxieli nikkonvinċi persuna u mara ta' sustanza" Joseph Muscat THIS IS A PAID ADVERT Konrad Mizzi (centre) during the arrival of the LNG tanker, now at the centre of new allegations of an FIAU report - but the FIAU has denied the claims