Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/933296
maltatoday SUNDAY 28 JANUARY 2018 News 3 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 The four parties declared they would hold an equal 25% share in a special purpose vehicle that would 70% of the hospitals projects, namely Bluestone Investments Malta. Although the other 30% owner is not specified in the agreement, Bluestone Malta is a 70% share- holder in the Maltese company Crossrange Holdings, together with the company Pivot Holdings, which has a 30% stake. Pivot is owned by Pakistani en- trepreneurs Shaukat Ali Chaudry, who has carried out business de- velopment work for VGH and lives at Tigné Point in Sliema; and fund specialist Mohammed Shoaib Walajahi Importantly, Crossrange Hold- ings owns the two companies Gozo International Medicare and Gozo Global Healthcare. These two companies, created as early as December 2014, were identi- fied in the investors' agreement as the asset holding company and operations company for Bluestone Malta. The Maltese government had steadfastly refused to identify the real owners of VGH, and never de- clared all the beneficial owners of the hospital project beyond Mark Pawley. At one point, Tumuluri and Shaukat Ali Chaudry were busy seeking a €50 million equity stake for a renewable energy project, in a meeting with a Norwegian com- pany where they boasted of VGH being valued at €2.8 billion. The government also hid the fact that VGH could use its sole discre- tion to extend what was believed to be a 30-year concession, for 99 years on the three hospitals. The only condition was that the gov- ernment can take back the title over Karin Grech and Gozo hospi- tals after the 30 years are up. To do so, the government would have to pay VGH €80 million. Technoline loans Technoline is a medical supplies company that was hand-picked by VGH under exclusive contract to manage the company's supply chain processes. The company has now featured in a Lovin' Malta report over how the company was acquired in Feb- ruary 2017 to act as exclusive sup- plier to VGH. Rival medical suppliers com- plained that Technoline could re- ceive all confidential information about contract bids, if they were to supply their products to VGH. Technoline was made responsible by VGH to "negotiate and inter- face" with all vendors. Technoline's shares were only re- cently acquired in February 2017, by Gateway Solutions, of which Ivan Vassallo is its sole shareholder and director. Technoline also has as a director Yaser Ali Bader, a Pakistani nation- al whose address in MFSA records is the same Tigne Point apartment as of Shaukat Ali Chaudry. Since Vassallo's acquisition of Technoline, the company has pro- cured four loans of €4.25 million from Bank of Valletta all in Sep- tember 2017: 1. A €1.25 million loan for "business commitments": ac- cording to the hypothec note, the loan must be repaid either upon expiry or "on cancellation of the guarantees in favour of the Gov- ernment of Malta" 2. A €1.5 million loan for "business commitments" that will be repaid upon the maturity of the VGH invoices as stipulated in the sanction letter 3. Another €1.5 million loan for business commitments to be repaid upon the maturity of "underlying invoices" 4. And a €1 million loan to be repaid on demand "from business generated revenue as agreed in the relative sanction letter". mvella@mediatoday.com.mt PAUL COCKS THE Council of Europe's anti- money laundering monitoring body, Moneyval, should look into the granting of a licence to Pilatus Bank, as well as the political hijack- ing of the financial services sector, David Casa said yesterday. Moneyval announced it will be sending an evaluation team to Malta in November to assess Mal- ta's compliance with the principal international standards to counter money laundering as well as the effectiveness of their implementa- tion. The teams visit Malta every two years before submitting a report to the Council of Ministers. The Nationalist MEP said that, in the coming weeks, he would be writing to Moneyval because he was concerned with the "political capture" of Malta's Financial In- vestigation and Analysis Unit. "The FIAU has been reduced to a government mouthpiece, more in- terested in c o n c e a l i n g information to protect corrupt poli- ticians and their collabo- rators than play- ing their role in bringing criminals to justice," he said in a state- ment. Last week Casa said he gave the European Central Bank further evidence on the private bank Pi- latus, which he claimed went be- yond "merely flouting" anti-mon- ey laundering rules. The bank has featured heavily in allegations that it hosted bank accounts for Azer- baijani oligarchs, as well as for the Prime Minister's chief-of-staff Keith Schembri. He had called for the withdrawal of the bank's licence through a complaint filed on 25 November last year and also asked for the bank to be taken over by the ECB. Casa has claimed to be in pos- session of an FIAU report, which allegedly shows tourism minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Min- ister's chief-of-staff Keith Schem- bri had taken kickbacks off the partial privatisation of Enemalta and the LNG power station con- tract through a Dubai company. Casa has pledged to publish this report in a few weeks' time, an ac- tion which could land him in trou- ble since the disclosure of FIAU investigations is punishable with five years' imprisonment and a fine of up to €116,468. He has accused Pilatus Bank of having been "conceived from the very start as an organisation de- signed to launder money, with banking staff instructed to fabri- cate paper trails justifying suspi- cious transactions after they have been carried out." Pilatus Bank was drawn into the investigation of allegations that the Prime Minister's wife Michelle Muscat was the owner of a secret Panama company, Egrant, and that the bank had processed a $1 million transaction into her ac- count from Azerbaijan. Casa yesterday said he would be presenting evidence – some of it already public – to Moneyval and encouraging it to consider a letter the FIAU had sent to Pilatus Bank immediately following the resig- nation of the unit's then director, Manfred Galdes. He said he would be asking that the information be passed on to the team that would be conduct- ing Malta's evaluation. The team, Casa said, should pay special attention to three main issues while in Malta: • The granting of a licence to Pilatus Bank in view of the fit and proper re- quirements set out un- der FATF R e c o m m e n - dation 26; • The cir- cumstances under which Pilatus Bank has been allowed to con- tinue to operate; • The autonomy and independ- ence of the FIAU. "The consequences of a negative evaluation can be significant. Im- mediate action is needed, much of which is called for in the rule of law report that was discussed in the EP this week," he said. "The longer this state of affairs persists, the more damage is being done to Malta." In 2017, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat decided to move the finan- cial services under the supervision of the Office of the Prime Minis- ter through the establishment of a parliamentary secretariat. This, he had said, was evidence that the government was commit- ted to continue strengthening as- sociated institutions, including the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA). Moneyval was originally set up in 1997, when the Council of Europe established the Select Commit- tee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures. In 2010, the Committee of Ministers adopted a resolution elevating Moneyval, as of 1 Janu- ary 2011, to an "independent monitoring mechanism within the Council of Europe, answer- able directly to the Committee of Ministers". Casa to hand evidence to EU investigation team ahead of Malta visit David Casa VGH's credit problems forced sale Mohammed Shoaib Walajahi and Shaukat Ali Chaudry: the two men are involved in Pivot Holdings a Maltese company; but Walajahi, pictured here outside the Office of the Prime Minister in Valletta, is the CEO and founder of Pivot Management Consultancy in Dubai, where he cultivated a "highly select client base" of ultra high-net worth individuals and institutional investors looking for real estate deals