Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/952911
maltatoday SUNDAY 11 MARCH 2018 4 News Discussion on state financing of political parties only if PN ends Cedoli scheme, government insists YANNICK PACE THE Maltese Government would be willing to discuss proposals on state funding of political parties, if the Nationalist Party agrees to end its Cedoli scheme, according to a spokesman for the Office of the Prime Minister. Launched in 2016, the contro- versial Cedoli scheme allows the PN to receive loans of €10,000 that it will repay over the next 10 years at an interest of 4%. Last July, the PN announced that it had collected some €3.5 million through the scheme, which has been repeatedly criti- cised by the Government and the Labour Party, given that donors' names are not disclosed to the public. The Government's statement comes in reply to statements made by PN leader Adrian Delia in recent weeks. In comments to MaltaToday, Delia, when told that many peo- ple view political parties as hav- ing too close a relationship with business interests, said that if this was the case, then perhaps it was time to discuss state funding. Speaking on current affairs programme Xtra last Thursday, Delia elaborated on the point, explaining that parties could not survive without donations from businesses and the general pub- lic. "We need to collect money for the party to be able to function and bring across its message." He added that the country could decide if it preferred the current system, or whether it was prepared to move to a system where parties are funded by the state. "When things are obvious I don't see why everyone is afraid to speak about them and bring them to the discussion table," he said. Pressed on whether he was prepared to put the issue on the national agenda, Delia said the country was at a stage "where we have to see what people think is the most democratic and transparent way" of financ- ing parties. He said that while Malta al- ready had a party financing law in place, rather than know who had donated to parties, it was impor- tant to know whether there was dependency on the people donat- ing money. When contacted about the matter, the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) noted that it had introduced party financing laws during the last legislature, "fol- lowing 25 years of inaction by the previous administration". Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has in the past declared himself to be in favour of state funding of political parties. "A pre-requisite to this debate is the Opposition coming clean on its very own Cedoli scheme by publishing details of participants and discontinuing the system," the spokesman said. Asked whether the Govern- ment would support broadening the scope of the current party fi- nancing law to better cover com- panies owned by political par- ties, the OPM stressed that the current law already "covers any organisation which the political parties directly or indirectly ex- ercise effective management and control over". Last year, lawyer and former Nationalist MP Franco Debono, one of the main authors of the party financing law, had told MaltaToday that too comprehen- sive a law at this stage would "kill political parties", stressing that the current laws were already a "big shock to the system". Under the current legislation, a donation is defined as any benefit received by a political party, any individual or any organisation, corporate or otherwise, repre- senting the party. However, it does not regulate commercial relationships between these com- panies and third-party compa- nies. In fact, a year ago it was revealed that the db Group had effectively made a donation of €70,800 to Media.Link, through which it was paying the salaries of two top PN officials. The PN has maintained that the payments were part of a commercial relationship between the two companies. "A pre- requisite to this debate is the Opposition coming clean on its very own Cedoli scheme by publishing details of participants and discontinuing the system" MATTHEW AGIUS A fraudster who requested some €30,000 to insure non-existent loans has been ordered to repay his victims or go to jail. The police had received complaints about Konstantin Alexander Ana- stasiou, a Greek national who was allegedly offering fake loans to busi- nessmen and had embarked on an investigation in 2004. During a search held at the ac- cused's residence in Wardija, sev- eral documents were seized and eventually presented in the acts of the proceedings. Further investiga- tions revealed that the accused had approached Robert Tonna, around October 2003, and offered Tonna the possibility of getting him a loan, precisely a business loan to be able to purchase the premises from which Tonna conducted his business. It emerged that Tonna, who had testified in Court, had said that he would need the sum of €1,164,687; however, the accused had said that he could only negotiate a minimum of €2,329,375, at which point the pair went about setting up a deal for €2,329,375 The accused then told Tonna that he would have to buy, in advance, an insurance policy to cover the loan that was being negotiated and that Anastasiou would also need to do some research about him. For this reason, Tonna had given the accused the sum of €25,623. But Tonna never received any insur- ance policy or any indication that the money had been used to issue an insurance policy. In fact, the accused never gave Tonna an explanation as to what had actually happened with the money. Neither did the accused return the sum he had demanded for his services. Further police investigations re- vealed that something very similar had happened to Joseph Schembri, a tourism services business owner who had also testified in Court. Schembri had wanted to buy a boat for his business and the accused hap- pened to appear in the picture at around December 2003, offering to provide him with a bank guarantee for the amount of €1,200,000. In an initial five payments, the ac- cused had managed to acquire the sum of €6,522 from Schembri. Out of this amount, Schembri later only managed to recuperate €1,863 from the accused. "It clearly transpired that the ac- cused never effectively gave any re- sults for the services he had prom- ised to deliver," noted the court. "In actual fact, the accused could never deliver on his promises be- cause from the evidence produced in this case, it clearly transpired that the accused was only presenting a false scenario, an elaborate scam to defraud the people who actually fell for the trap." Magistrate Ian Farrugia sentenced the man to four years imprisonment, suspended for two years and ordered him to repay the victims in full or be jailed if he failed to comply. Fraudster ordered to repay €30,000 or face prison