Pilatus Bank Chairman – the Maltese angle

The chairman of Maltese-registered Pilatus Bank has been arrested on US charges that he participated in a scheme to evade US sanctions and funnel more than $115 million paid under a Venezuelan construction contract through the US financial system, US federal prosecutors said.

Locally, the Pilatus Bank has been at the centre of scandal, having threatened a number of Maltese media houses with strategic lawsuit against public participation (SLAPP) lawsuits. The bank is also involved in inquiries by the courts.

Pilatus Bank was also in litigation with the Maltese journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was murdered last October, over a number of articles she wrote about the bank and the chairman.

When the story about Pilatus Bank and the claims by former employee regarding rogue company in Panama Egrant broke, the chairman was famously discovered to be leaving the bank by a side entrance with a satchel on his way to the airport.

EU MEPs have also recently expressed concerns about the bank on separate issues, stating that "there is a growing body of leaked evidence from Maltese authorities and first-hand testimony that place Pilatus Bank at the centre of illicit financial flows from Malta's citizenship-by-investment scheme, the sale of state assets, and unexplained inflows from high-risk jurisdictions like Azerbaijan to Maltese politically exposed figures".

There has been silence from the government and the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, which had investigated the bank and reportedly given it the all-clear.

Paul Caruana Galizia, Daphne Caruana Galizia's son, summed up the development in a two-word tweet - 'One Down.'