Busuttil was right in going to Bugeja again

Opposition Leader Simon Busuttil was absolutely right in taking his evidence on alleged kickbacks by Brian Tonna to Keith Schembri, and new evidence allegedly proving that Adrian Hillman paid more than €650,000 to the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, to Magistrate Aaron Bugeja.

He was right in doing so, because the scope of Bugeja’s inquiry, which was seen by this newspaper, is wide enough to cover all the aforementioned claims.

The scope of the inquiry being led by Magistrate Aaron Bugeja – which is still ongoing, contrary to the claims made by Illum – are to see (1) if Mrs Michelle Muscat allegedly is the ultimate beneficial owner of EGRANT Inc, (2) if the Prime Minister or members of his family, or John Dalli, or Keith Schembri or Konrad Mizzi hold accounts at Pilatus Bank, if they were involved in suspicious financial transactions within Pilatus Bank or in acts of corruption or money laundering with persons from Azerbaijan at Pilatus Bank.

The Aaron Bugeja inquiry was opened to look into claims that Michelle Muscat is the owner of Egrant, the third Panamanian company. The

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claims were originally made by journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who is being sued by Joseph and Michelle Muscat. A whistleblower then came forward. The woman, a Russian national who had worked at Pilatus Bank, says she saw inside a safe documents which prove that Michelle Muscat is the UBO of Egrant. She repeated these claims in an interview published in The Malta Independent on Sunday and later on INDEPTH.

Shortly after the inquiry was launched, Simon Busuttil went to Aaron Bugeja with evidence on the alleged kickbacks given by Brian Tonna to Keith Schembri, with the money allegedly coming from the citizenship for sale scheme. After examining the evidence, Magistrate Bugeja had decided that the case should be looked into by another Magistrate. That task landed in Magistrate Natasha Galea Sciberras’ lap. It is understood that this was done because the Magistrate felt that the bombshell claims merited a separate investigation, not because they did not fall under his remit. The scope of the inquiry, as described above, clearly shows this. Now, the PN Leader has presented the same magistrate with new evidence on an unrelated case – the alleged payments that Schembri gave to Adrian Hillman. Busuttil went to Aaron Bugeja, rather than Natasha Galea Sciberras, because the latter’s terms of reference are more specific – that inquiry deals solely with the Schembri-Tonna claims. On the other hand the new Hillman-Schembri claims still fall under the remit of Magistrate Aaron Bugeja’s inquiry. One now has to wait and see whether Dr Bugeja will rule that the new claims also deserve a separate and specific investigation, which would mean the launching of a third inquiry into the serious claims of money laundering.

The Labour Party has accused Simon Busuttil of going to the wrong magistrate in order to waste time, so that the inquiry would drag on until after the election, thus bettering his chances of winning at the polls. But the simple truth is that Dr Busuttil did the right thing.

Besides, the Opposition Leader seems confident enough that the evidence he has presented will lead to the prosecution of the PM’s closest aide and friend, so he has no reason at all to drag this out until after the election. Quite the contrary.