17 Black claims to be probed, but under existing inquiry

The magistrate’s court has ruled that new claims related to the company 17 Black should be probed but this should be done as part of an existing inquiry, not a new one.

The request for a new inquiry to be launched was made by former Opposition leader Simon Busuttil and Nationalist Party MEP David Casa last month, following fresh revelations from the Daphne Project.

The pair had requested a criminal inquiry into Mizzi, Schembri, Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna and Karl Cini and Mario Pullicino, the Malta agent for the gas floating storage unit.

The request was based on a leaked email, published by Times of Malta, which showed that the Dubai-registered company had received two payments totaling $1.6 million between July and November 2015. The newspaper had also quoted from Nexia BT’s Karl Cini, in which 17 Black was described as a ‘target client’ of Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi’s Panama companies.

Schembri later admitted 17 Black was inserted in a draft business plan but said no trading was ever carried out.

In its decision, Magistrate Francesco Depasquale yesterday said that “it is not in the best interest of justice to have double, or even triple” investigations on the same case since this will lead to “unnecessary waste of resources and disrupts the efficient conduct of such a complex investigation”.

Depasquale said the new allegation concerned a crime on which an inquiry had already been requested in July last year.

He ruled that the fresh evidence, in the form of an email, should have been presented in the original case.

The magistrate also said that there was no evidence to substantiate the opening of an inquiry into Pullicino.

The July 2017 inquiry refers to a request made by Busuttil shortly after the general election for a criminal probe into Panama Papers, through which it transpired that Mizzi and Schembri had opened companies in the central American country.

Magistrate Ian Farrugia had ruled there were enough grounds for a criminal inquiry to start, at the end of which it would be determined whether a criminal investigation was warranted.

However, the Panama Papers inquiry has since stalled after the people called into question, including Mizzi, Schembri and Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, appealed the ruling, insisting that similar inquiries were already under way. The appeals process is still underway. they said, so Mizzi and Schembri should drop the appeals and allow the investigation to happen.