Libyan middleman will give full evidence to a Maltese-Libyan commission

● Challenges Maltese government to hold meeting with Libyan counterparts

The Libyan middleman at the centre of the medical visas scandal is willing to produce all the evidence he has in his possession to a joint committee comprised of Libyan and Maltese authorities.

Speaking yesterday to The Malta Independent on Sunday, Libyan middleman Khaled Ben Nasan issued a challenge to the Maltese authorities to convene such a meeting with their Libyan counterparts so as to set the record straight once and for all.

Libyan authorities, Mr Ben Nasan says, are willing to travel to Malta for such a meeting, at which he said he would table all the evidence he has, including documentation and videos, in his possession.

Mr Ben Nasan says Libya’s health minister is also willing to come to Malta for such an encounter, while also claiming that all government departments in Libya are ready to support him on the issue.

Moreover, Mr Ben Nasan says he has a list of close to 400 Libyans who are willing to testify that they paid for medical visas for family members. These include relatives of several Libyans who allegedly died waiting for their medical visas for treatment in Malta. “Their families,” Mr Ben Nasan says, “will be ready to testify.”

He also reiterated claims that instead of genuinely injured Libyans, Maltese visas had also, in some instances, gone to others who were not injured. He asserts that some of them were dangerous people who managed to escape from Libya to Malta. Some of them, Mr Ben Nasan says, had paid up to €5,000 each for their visas and at least 10 of them are listed in Libya as being very dangerous individuals.

But according to Mr Ben Nasan, despite the pressure he is under, he has been trying to keep such problems out of the media as much as possible so as to not jeopardise relations between the countries. Malta and Libya are neighbours, he stresses, and Libya will have a new government in place in the very near future. Malta needs to maintain good relations, he said, but this outstanding issue is marring the longstanding relationship.

He says that if all the evidence he has were to be made public, relations would suffer and there could possibly be repercussions for Maltese and Maltese businesses in Libya.

“A few bad apples that the Maltese government knows very well are jeopardising these bilateral relations,” he said yesterday.

Moreover, he says he has only been questioned once by the police at the beginning since the whole saga started, and has not been contacted by the police since then. When he was questioned he was reticent about handing over all the evidence he has because of trust issues, which is why he says he will make the evidence available to a bilateral commission.

Mr Ben Nasan, a Libyan national critical of reportage identifying him as Syrian, also slammed what he described as a character assassination campaign being carried out against him by one particular section of the media, and that he is ready to take legal action against those who he says are slandering him.

In the coming days, he says he will appoint a group of lawyers to take on cases of slander and what he says are the “fabrication of lies” in his respect.

Speaking to this newspaper yesterday, Mr Ben Nasan said it was never his intention to interfere in Maltese politics and that he has always had good relations with both the government and the Opposition in the last 15-odd years that he has been living in Malta.

The current and past Maltese governments know him, he insists, and he has also been instrumental in bringing foreign direct investment to Malta.

But now he and his family are being subjected to “savage attacks” after he attempted to recover €38,000 in ‘fees’ for visas that were never delivered. Such attacks include threats to his children and family and misinformation being reported questioning his identity and claiming he is wanted by the Libyan authorities.

Such reports, he says, are rubbish and that he works with all factions in the Libyan equation.

“I have worked hard over the years to Malta’s benefit,” he says, “and I have brought people to Malta who have invested millions in the country by purchasing properties and opening businesses.”

He insists that he is fully authorised by a number of different cities in Libya which have their own individual committees for the treatment of injured people.

When the system for medical visas for Libyans began in 2014 – which saw Libyans injured in hostilities being treated in Malta and hospital bills being settled by the Libyan government – it had worked quite well, Mr Ben Nasan says, but matters later took a distinct turn for the worse with money being requested for the processing of visas.

“Libyans were forced to pay money, which they accepted to do because they were so desperate to receive treatment in Malta that was not available in Libya,” he said yesterday.

He adds, “All those injured came to Malta with the hope of treatment that was supposed to be free of charge, but they ended up paying up to €3,000 for their medical visas. Since then, Neville Gafa’s office never accepted one person without payment.”