Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi on Tuesday demanded action by the police for the arraignment of officials from Pilatus and BNP Paribas banks for their alleged involvement in plots that were robbing the Maltese people of millions of euro.

Speaking in parliament on the adjournment, Azzopardi said the authorities needed to explain how officials of Pilatus Bank have not been arrested yet, even though a magisterial inquiry which cost taxpayers €7.5 million had ordered legal action against them for money laundering.

Times of Malta had reported in December that the inquiry was concluded and handed to the state prosecutor.

Details about its cost were given in reply to a parliamentary question earlier on Tuesday.

Azzopardi said the €7.5m cost of the inquiry was the price society was forced to  pay after the Labour government created the circumstances where its officials could steal and hide their millions, to the detriment of society as a whole. 

The inquiry, he recalled, was launched after protests by members of civil society. But the question now was why, to date, the officials and owners of Pilatus Bank, in Malta and overseas, had not been arrested despite the orders of the inquiring magistrate.

Had any arrest warrants been issued against bank owner Ali Sadr and other officials currently abroad who had undermined Malta’s reputation?

Azzopardi observed that Pilatus was not the only bank that had undermined Malta’s reputation.

One of the banks which the government and Yorgen Fenech had resorted to for their ‘dirty’ Electrogas project was BNP Paribas. The Caruana Galizia family had asked France to open an investigation into this bank and its loan for the Electgrogas project. 

This same bank, he recalled, had been involved in several documented cases of theft and other crime around the world.

In 2014 BNP-Paribas pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate US economic sanctions.

In another case, the bank settled a $40 million lawsuit brought by an Orthodox former employee who was fired from his senior position after he complained that he had to sit through two screenings of a training film that depicted Hitler and other Nazi imagery to boost morale.  

In February 2021, a New York court ruled that a class action could be moved against BNP Paribas for conspiracy and aiding and abetting human rights violations in Sudan from 1997 to 2009. 

It was with this bank of criminals that Malta had been associated in
order to implement the Electrogas power station project, which was robbing the Maltese people €40 million a year, Azzopardi said.

One only needed to realize what could have been done with the €7.4 million spent on the inquiry, and the €40m being stolen every year because of the power station scandal. Those millions could have been used for better wages for ordinary workers, or new schools, for example.

Azzopardi said BNP Paribas bank officials had been asked three times to appear before a Maltese court, and they had refused. 

What were the police and the local regulators doing for these officials to be brought before a Maltese court to be investigated for corruption and money laundering? 

Was there need for another expensive magisterial inquiry to confirm what was already known – that Malta government officials and their business friends were accomplices with BNP Paribas for the people of Malta to be robbed every year through artificially high electricity prices?  

Inquiry report not handed to State Advocate

Times of Malta erroneously reported earlier that the Pilatus Inquiry report was handed to the State Advocate last December. In a statement, the Office of the State Advocate said the report was not handed to it as the matter does not fall within the remit of the Office of the State Advocate.