Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/926403
maltatoday SUNDAY 14 JANUARY 2018 12 News THE Hili group has reinstated as director Richard Abdilla Castillo, the owner of Baltimore Fiduciary which at one point was at the cen- tre of a shelved police investigation into alleged money laundering. Abdilla Castillo had resigned his post as a director of the Hili Group ahead of a €20 million bond issue by Premier Capital in October. Baltimore had been identified in a police investigation as the nomi- nee shareholder and name-lender for CapitalOne Investment Group, a company that police suspected was a vehicle for money launder- ing. The case happened in early 2013, but it was only in 2016 that MaltaToday revealed that a police inspector's request for investiga- tion was ignored by top brass. One of Baltimore Fiduciary's di- rectors at the time was Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami. In a company announcement for PTL Holdings and Hili Group, the group said no further disclosures for Abdilla Castillo's appointment as director were necessary beyond the fact that Baltimore Fiduciary was fined €16,000 by the financial regulator and had now surren- dered its authorisation. The fiduciary was responsible for the company CapitalOne, a company owned by a Dutch poker player whose residences had been raided by Dutch police in a drug bust in November 2012. Subse- quently, Maltese police found large amounts of cash being being trans- ferred from Greek companies into CapitalOne and then deposited into a Valletta Fund Management account, before being transferred back to other Greek companies. MaltaToday, which broke the story, reported that the police in- vestigation was not pursued when investigators highlighted the pres- ence of Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami – then the parlia- mentary assistant for home affairs – as a director of Baltimore Fidu- ciary. Fenech Adami resigned his post in Baltimore in January 2014. In August 2016, Abdilla Castillo sold off CapitalOne to convicted Greek fraudster Ioannis Moustos, whose own companies transferred large amounts of cash to the Maltese firm. Abdilla Castillo had resigned his directorship pending a govern- ment inquiry into the reasons why a police investigation was not tak- en forward. The board of inquiry did not de- termine whether the money laun- dering investigation was not pur- sued because of Fenech Adami's role as non-executive director in Baltimore. But it said the police were "duty-bound to investigate CapitalOne on the serious suspi- cions of money laundering" and that the case "merited its own formal file, and had to be given the right direction from Aqui- lina's superiors, so that it could be carried out like other normal investigations." The board said a technical re- port into some €5 million in CapitalOne banking transactions warranted a more thorough in- vestigation, and the contents were passed on to the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit. On their best behaviour CapitalOne fiduciary director reinstated on Hili boards MEET Tim, a 22-year-old graph- ic designer who's quite typical of other young people his age. Ex- cept that, he does not drink. Nor does he consume any drugs: a fact he says made him the brunt of many jokes and snide com- ments when he attended Junior College at 16. "Many other students didn't seem to be able to comprehend how I didn't need to drink to have a good time, especially at parties. It caused a little embar- rassment at first, and certainly made things awkward." Six years on, he says things have changed significantly. "It's become less of a joke and more respectable," he says. "People don't find it weird any- more that I don't drink much, and I think that's because they're actually realising that I may have been right, and that one does not need to drink to have a good time might." And Tim is not alone. All throughout 2017, interna- tional media repeatedly picked up on studies which suggest that the youngest generation of people – 12 to 22-year olds – are drinking less and doing less drugs, but it is unclear whether this trend has reached our shores yet, or whether it will affect local youth at all. Angele, 27, notices that today's teens are more mindful about the consequences of certain be- haviour. "I think young people nowa- days are more aware of mental health. When I was a teen, my peers didn't care about these things at all." Surely enough, Lisa, 19, says that she quit consuming various types of substances due to men- tal health concerns. "I was suffering from panic at- tacks and nicotine rushes, and feeling out of control from drink- ing made me go nuts. I abstained from drugs due to anxiety also. When I did it, it was totally un- heard of [in Malta]. But in the UK, I can name at least five peo- ple off the top of my head doing the same thing." Others make a comparison be- tween the behaviour of youths in Malta and those in other Euro- pean cities. "I noticed such behaviour [ab- stention] in Eindhoven. Out of over a thousand people, only between five and ten were heav- ily inebriated, from my point of view. Most were sober and some didn't drink at all," Marton, 27, said. "Locally, all the under 22s I know get hammered quite fre- quently and not just on booze." "We differ from other Eu- ropean cities like London due to drinking behaviour. I think elsewhere, young people tend to drink more regularly, whereas we tend to binge drink," Angele added. Statistics prove just this, since Malta is among the top five countries surveyed to report 'heavy episodic drinking in the last 30 days' (at 47%), out of 37 countries in the latest ESPAD (European School Survey Pro- ject) report. Prof. Andrew Azzopardi, Dean of the Faculty for Social Well- TIA RELJIC Drug culture is still big but even in Malta, teen awareness on mental health and social media exposure could be fuelling a 'clean resistance' Abdilla Castillo had resigned his post as a director of the Hili Group ahead of a €20 million bond issue by Premier Capital in October In August 2016, Abdilla Castillo sold off CapitalOne to convicted Greek fraudster Ioannis Moustos, whose own companies transferred large amounts of cash to the Maltese firm MATTHEW VELLA