Small Maltese company offered to help ailing Italian bank

A small Maltese company offered to come up with an injection of €30 million to help ailing Italian bank Banca Popolare di Bari out of its problems.

But a cross-check with Malta’s Registry of Companies in Malta revealed the Maltese company, Muse Ventures Ltd, is a consulting company with a capital base of just €1,200.

According to the Maltese Business Registry, Muse’s director is Nicola Cupido, described as

Maltese (but in other documents described as Italian) while the shareholders are listed as LlH Ltd which has Mr Cupido listed as its director and its shareholders as Trustforte Fiduciary Ltd.

The bank, which is now being rescued by the Italian state (see above) had long been in trouble due to concerns about its management and viability.

Attention has now been focused on its former administrators, especially the Jacobini family and its former CEO Vincenzo De Bustis.

Between December 2018 and March 2019 De Bustis announced that salvation was at hand. The bank’s capital would be increased by €30 million through Additional Tier I funds. He announced that the Maltese company wanted to cover the entire deficit of the bank by injecting €30 million.

When amazement was expressed how so small a company could plug in the bank’s deficit, De Bustis told the bank’s board that the operation was done. Bnp Paribas, which was overseeing the bank replied that there were problems of transparency. Nevertheless, De Bustis continued to insist the operation was possible, so much so that the bank next bought shares in a Luxembourg company, Naxos Sif Capital Plus, worth €51 million.

It was here that the Italian Central Bank started to feel there was something fishy about the whole operation, especially as the Maltese company did not forward not even one euro of the €30 million that had been promised.

Banca Popolare was thus forced to not give to Naxos the promised €51 million and Naxos, which claimed it had not known about the Maltese operation, sued the Italian bank.

According to the Italian media, the administrator of Muse is Gianluigi Torzi who, together with his father Enrico is in the black list of dangerous persons in banking circles and had already been investigated for other reasons.

The Banca Popolare officials came to know of all this and reported to the Italian Central Bank which in turn reported to the police officials of Bari who began an investigation.