‘Gold Pool’ was a Ponzi scheme linked to John Dalli, according to a 2017 New York Times report.
The scheme defrauded eight US retirees of €1.5 million. The eight had sent their life savings to Clare Gauci Borda, Dalli’s daughter.
The deeply devout Christians thought their investment would help impoverished people.
Instead, Dalli’s two daughters allegedly funnelled the money into Tyre Ltd and Corporate Group, which they owned and which were registered at the disgraced former European commissioner’s Portomaso address.
Dalli’s two daughters, Louisa Dalli and Gauci Borda, stand accused of money laundering, misappropriation of funds, fraud, making a false declaration to a public authority and falsification of documents. Gauci Borda is separately charged with breaching money laundering and financing of terrorism laws and with failing to fulfil her professional duties as an accountant and auditor.
The latest episode in their farcical prosecution played out in front of Magistrate Caroline Farrugia Frendo on June 4, The case has been dragged out since 2015. Despite long years available to the prosecution to prepare itself, no evidence was presented against the accused in “sitting after sitting”.
Police Inspector Hubert Cini, prosecuting, admitted that he had sealed boxes of evidence but did not know what they contained or whether they were even relevant. The inspector publicly admitted that he “knew nothing about the case” and was still familiarising himself with the voluminous documentary evidence.
His excuse was that he was new to the case. It was not just Cini who was new. The AG lawyer assigned the case was also new. His predecessor was vaguely reported to be “temporarily out of office”. The AG was apparently “unaware of these problems”.
The AG must have known. Cini declared he had requested the AG’s office to file a copy of the inquiring magistrate’s proces verbal. The AG’s office had done nothing.
The magistrate was defending the accused better than the defence lawyers: “So the AG knows nothing, the prosecution knows nothing and, meanwhile, the accused have charges hanging over their heads. This is not fair.”
Not fair, not for Dalli’s daughters but for the eight investors robbed of their life savings.
Janie Moore, one of the defrauded, recovered only $7,200 of the $409,000 she had invested and has “no money to even live on”, the New York Times reported. Regina Hayes, according to EU Observer, sold her house and even gave up her dog.
The police and the FBI were asked to investigate the Ponzi scheme in 2015. For two years, the Maltese police slept on the case.
The FBI, according to the New York Times struggled to get information from Malta. Records obtained by that newspaper showed the authorities in Malta did nothing.
The institutions are working while the accused enjoy the sea- Kevin Cassar
Former police commissioner John Rizzo stated that “there was enough evidence to substantiate a criminal case against John Dalli” and that he “cannot really explain” why Dalli was not charged.
When the New York Times contacted then-attorney general Peter Grech he declined to discuss the case.
It took another three years before Dalli’s daughters were charged. When charges were filed, the police decided to press joint charges against six individuals, four of whom were foreign and too frail and ill to appear in court. These included
Elizabeth Jean Jackson, who had sustained a stroke, and Marie Eloise Corbin Klein, whose mobility was severely limited.
John Dalli had taken three trips to meet the latter in the Bahamas in 2012, the New York Times reported, including a round trip from Cyprus in one weekend, telling the secretary general that he had “urgent family matters in Malta” to attend to. He also travelled with Corbin-Klein to a German health spa in 2011 and 2012.
The joint prosecution ensured that the case was stalled due to failure of the elderly foreign accused to attend sittings. Almost one year later, in October 2018, the prosecution finally requested a separation of proceedings. Defence lawyer Stephen Tonna Lowell conveniently pointed out that this could not happen in the absence of the four foreign accused, stalling the case further.
On February 4, 2019, then magistrate Aaron Bugeja expressed his “frustration that the case has stalled once again”. The prosecution testified that its “superiors” did not want to separate proceedings after all.
As the four foreign accused grew older and frailer, the joint prosecution was going nowhere. The very defence lawyers who had done their utmost to delay the process now complained that “there was a right to justice within a reasonable time”.
More than seven years after the case surfaced, three of the foreign accused have died and the sole survivor, Corbin Klein, Dalli’s friend, is severely ill. The prosecuting inspector is new, the AG lawyer is new and the magistrate is new.
What has not changed is the lack of evidence presented before the court and the failure of justice for the eight Evangelical Christians cheated of their life savings.
In another money laundering case, this time against Brian Tonna, Karl Cini and Katrin Bondin Carter of Nexia BT, the magistrate exploded in court, shouting: “What are we, Wasteserv?”
The prosecution had presented three large boxes of evidence. But the magistrate simply refused to accept them, ruling the prosecution ought to go through it first.
“This has to stop, this is not professional,” the increasingly irate magistrate chided in a raised voice. The Malta Financial Services Authority witness, however, pleaded that she had cut six boxes of documents down to three.
The defence lawyers were on the magistrate’s side berating the prosecution again. The same Tonna Lowell pointed out that the unchecked documents showed the prosecution had not done its job properly. Besides, he complained, it would take three years to prepare his defence.
If it takes years for the prosecution to present any evidence, magistrates reject evidence when presented and defence lawyers complain there’s too much of it, no wonder Tonna and Cini are requesting permission to go swimming.
But, calm down, the institutions are working while the accused enjoy the sea.
Kevin Cassar, professor of surgery and former PN candidate