The police have insisted they are still trying to resolve an alleged money-laundering case involving Opposition leader Adrian Delia.
The case revolves around suspicions that Dr Delia bounced funds derived from two Soho brothels through offshore accounts to obscure the origins of the money between 2001 and 2004.
One senior police source said investigators had all but abandoned the probe, as the passage of time had made gathering the necessary evidence for a potential prosecution all but impossible.
However, a police spokesman said it would not be prudent to divulge details as “investigations are still ongoing,” when questioned about the status of the case.
In March 2018, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) had handed the police a 30-page report recommending an investigation into potential financial crimes involving the Opposition leader.
Slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia had reported on the alleged racket in detail in the weeks preceding her death, at a time when Dr Delia was campaigning to take over the leadership of the Nationalist Party.
The ‘rent’ payments varied from £400 to £16,000
She claimed that the ‘rent’ payments received into Dr Delia’s account were in fact a cover for illicit earnings from prostitution. Dr Delia had vehemently denied her reports and sued the journalist, only retracting the libel cases after her assassination.
The claims had led to calls for him to pull out of the leadership race and have dogged him ever since.
Times of Malta has previously reported how the FIAU conducted an in-depth analysis of Dr Delia’s offshore Jersey account, gathering information from several jurisdictions, including Malta, the UK, Switzerland, the Bahamas, the British Virgin Islands and the Marshall Islands.
The unit found that Dr Delia’s account – which he has repeatedly denied having any recollection of – was opened in February 2001 and closed in October 2004.
According to the FIAU’s analysis, the ‘rent’ payments that went into Dr Delia’s account each month varied from £400 to £16,000 per deposit.
The varying deposit amounts led to suspicions that the money being paid in was not from a fixed rent source as claimed.