An international group that counted former minister Christian Cardona among its advisers has put “on hold” a local charity endeavour due to a “somewhat hostile environment” towards one of its companies in Malta.

Insignia Group, a business focused on providing bespoke services to the “ultra-rich”, set up a Malta charity foundation in 2019.

Insignia Group’s local subsidiary, Insignia Cards, has found itself in hot water with regulators due to lax anti-money laundering controls.

The group appointed Infrastructure Minister Ian Borg’s wife, Rachelle Borg Dingli and Christabelle Camilleri, the CEO of major roads contractors V&C Construction, as the charity’s local administrators.

Borg Dingli was given power of attorney by Insignia Group to set up the foundation. According to documents she signed, the foundation was meant to raise funds and provide medication and/or medical treatment and equipment needed for children’s’ illnesses. 

Poor administration

The foundation was established with an extremely modest endowment of €233 from Insignia Group.

Citing “poor administration” in its first year of operations, the foundation said in its annual report that “nothing and none” of its charitable aims had been achieved.

“The hope for future years, not only the year 2020, is to have numerous events organised, funds raised and overall successes,” the annual report concluded.

Both Borg Dingli and Camilleri had resigned from the foundation by 2020.

The foundation was established with an extremely modest endowment of €233 from Insignia Group

That same year, Cardona came onto the scene as an Insignia Group adviser, a few months after missing out on a post in Prime Minister Robert Abela’s new cabinet.

The foundation’s annual reports for 2020 and 2021 show a similar dearth of activity, calling in to question why Insignia set up the charity in the first place.

Rules dictating the way voluntary organisations such as foundations are governed have been tightened in recent years due to money-laundering concerns.

Hostile environment

A spokesperson for Insignia Group said that “due to a somewhat hostile environment” towards one of its entities in Malta, a reference to Insignia Cards, the group took the “difficult decision” to put this venture on hold until the local environment is considered to be more tenable.

“This foundation was set up with all good intentions and faith, though never became operational due to the above-mentioned reasons,” the spokesperson said.

“We hope there will be a time that we will be able to reignite this project for the benefit of local children and Maltese hospitals.”

The spokesperson added that references about “poor administration” within the foundation were linked to the fact that the charity “remained dormant and did not become active”, stressing this had nothing to do with Borg Dingli and Camilleri.

Luca Surguladze, the son of Insignia Group’s media-shy founder Michael Surguladze, was also appointed as an administrator on the foundation’s board at the age of 25.

A Georgian by birth, Michael Surguladze moved to Russia, taking advantage of former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies to open up the country’s economy and promote capital investment.

Starting out in publishing, Surguladze would later go on to launch his first bespoke credit card aimed at high net worth individuals in 2002.

Malta Business Registry filings now list Surguladze as a “Ukrainian national” residing in the UK.

He had refused to be photographed during a 2015 interview with Times of Malta, during which he boasted about his close friendship with the recently sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.

“Unfortunately, too many people associate the lack of a public profile with being a criminal or a money launderer or so on... I understand that, when people come from nowhere with billions, the assumption is that it is money laundering,” Surguladze had said during the interview.

“But there are a lot of anti-money laundering regulations and compliance processes.”

Anti-money laundering failures

Insignia’s local subsidiary, Insignia Cards, was fined €373,000 by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) over a raft of anti-money laundering breaches, including its failure to flag potentially suspicious activity by a Russian client with alleged ties to the mafia.

The Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) went a step further last December, ordering Insignia Cards to halt certain operations over a raft of regulatory breaches.

The company was ordered to cease the pre-funding of charge cards, cease processing payments from two of its sister companies and appoint an independent third party “to provide guidance”.

Insignia Cards has pushed back at accusations of wrongdoing, filing an appeal against the MFSA’s directive.

A spokesperson for Insignia Cards told Times of Malta that it has nothing to do with the Insignia Foundation, instead directing this newspaper to send questions to its parent company, Insignia Group.

The Ian Borg connection

Rachelle Borg Dingli and Christabelle Camilleri told Times of Malta that they are childhood friends.

Insignia Group’s spokesperson said the two women were approached to sit on the foundation’s board due to their upstanding reputation in the local community and the company sincerely believed they would be highly regarded representatives of the charity.

Camilleri, a former Eurovision singer, is the CEO of V&C Contractors. V&C and affiliated companies have received upwards of €19 million in government contracts from entities under Ian Borg’s political control.

She told Times of Malta that she was approached to become an administrator of the Insignia Foundation by Luca Surguladze after representing Malta in the Eurovision and speaking openly about a number of social issues, particularly mental health.

Camilleri pointed out how, prior to being made an administrator, she had also been appointed as mental health ambassador for Malta by President Emeritus Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca.

“Unfortunately, the foundation never functioned and the board never met. I thus resigned from my unpaid and voluntary position in 2019,” Camilleri said.

Camilleri added that she is not informed about any claims of poor administration made by the foundation in her regard.

On her part, Borg Dingli said she was invited to sit on the charity foundation by Luca Surguladze in 2019.

Borg Dingli said that the appointment was on a voluntary basis, with no remuneration ever being paid, pointing out the foundation was set up to assist vulnerable children and families in local communities.

“This foundation, unfortunately, never took off the ground. Zero meetings, zero activities, zero money raised and zero money spent,” she said.

“I tendered my resignation after a couple of months from the foundation’s inception and,  since nothing happened during my participation, it is best to ask the successors whether it is still active and if any bad administrative issues were identified after I left,” she said.