A lawyer and businessman has been fined €105,000 by the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) for offering “unauthorised” services.
Pio Valletta was fined by the financial regulator and ordered to immediately cease acting as an “unauthorised” company services provider.
As part of an MFSA directive, Valletta was ordered to refrain from taking on new clients and from providing existing clients with new services.
The lawyer was also ordered not to destroy, alter or amend any documents linked to the provision of services regulated by the MFSA.
The MFSA is currently facing four lawsuits contesting its powers to issue fines and take other regulatory action.
The Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, another regulator, has faced similar challenges to its powers, though a constitutional court recently ruled in favour of it.
Valletta told Times of Malta that he intends to appeal the “unreasonable” MFSA decision.
He said the decision does not account for the fact that he had stopped providing secretarial services for most of the companies in question, with the exception of seven companies which he owns.
Valletta said the financial regulator had also taken account of the fact that he has a vested legal right to continue acting for companies for which he was company secretary prior to the entry into force of the licensing requirement.
“Furthermore and without prejudice to my claim that the decision is unreasonable, the imposition of the fine of €105,000 is completely arbitrary and completely disproportionate… I intend fighting this in every forum available as I feel it is a very unjust decision,” Valletta said.
In 2022, Valletta lost a case filed against him by the widow of a Kazakhstan oligarch linked to the “misappropriation” of client funds.
Elnara Shorazova had filed a case against her former lawyer for reneging on an agreement to repay €900,000 in misappropriated funds.
The agreement stipulated that Valletta would be given a €300,000 discount if he stuck to a repayment plan.
A court found that Valletta had not been punctual in his payments, therefore ordering him to pay the €300,000 due to non-observance of the repayment plan.
Valletta had been charged with misappropriation of funds but had been acquitted in 2017 after Shorazova failed to appear in court to testify, ostensibly as a result of the agreement to drop charges.