A judge on Thursday allowed the bosses of French bank BNP Paribas to appeal an earlier decree ordering them to come to Malta to testify in a €1 billion anti-semitism lawsuit filed by a Maltese investment house and its founder, Malta-based businessman Jacob Agam.
Mr Justice Joseph Zammit McKeon had already ordered the chairman and the CEO of the bank to appear in court to testify but they resisted the order, arguing that they could not be forced to come to Malta to testify.
They filed an application in court to appeal the summons and the judge ruled that it would be “better and fairer” if the matter is decided by a Court of Appeal prior to final judgment given the exceptional circumstances of the case.
The lawsuit was filed against the bank, its chairman Jean Lemierre and CEO Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, after Agam, a British-Israeli businessman, accused it of committing a campaign of distraction “inspired by anti-semitism and hate” against his Maltese assets, including his investment house, Vertical Group Holding.
He is seeking €1 billion in damages from Banque Paribas which was allegedly involved in the financing of Electrogas, the company which controversially won the Delimara power station project which has been plagued by allegations of corruption and linked to the assassination of journalist Daphne Caruana
Galizia.
The consortium is made up of the Gasan Group, the Fenech family of Tumas Group and the Apap Bologna family. The three together own GEM Holdings, which has a 33 per cent shareholding in the Electrogas project. German giants Siemens and Azerbaijan's state energy company SOCAR each also have 33 per cent stakes in the venture.
The lawsuit against BNP Paribas and its bosses, including the bank’s legal counsel Valerie Lafarge-Sarkozy, had been filed in 2019. Agam and Vertical claim that the intentional actions of the bank and its executives affected his and his company's business and reputation, resulting in significant damages.
The case has been stalled on whether an in-camera decree given by Mr Justice Zammit Mckeon for Bonnafé and Lemierre to take the stand as witnesses can be appealed.
The bank had initially argued that the Maltese court held no jurisdiction over this case since the bank had no business in Malta. However, Mr Justice Zammit Mckeon ruled that it did and ordered the top executives of BNP Paribas to appear before the court to face the accusations brought against them by Agam.
Agam told the court that BNP Paribas had been involved in other transactions, such as with the now-defunct company 'Malta Cross'.