In its report on the Paradise Leaks, Le Monde interprets the leaks from Appleby to show that the company Joe Bannister “managed, misappropriated public funds from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)”.

This concerns a company registered in the British Virgin Islands that invested in a Russian mining company and applied and obtained EBRD funding which went belly up. The Russian company appears to be a classic scam to dupe investment bankers into funding white elephants.

Le Monde makes the call and describes Joe Bannister’s project as misappropriation.

It contacts Joe Bannister who tells Le Monde he was just a director of the fund and the internal supervisor of the MFSA (who technically reported to him) knew what Joe Bannister was up to. When it dug further Le Monde expresses no surprise that this supposed supervisor who knew what Joe Bannister was doing is now dead and cannot confirm or deny the alibi.

And can Bannister show correspondence to prove what he’s saying? No. Bannister’s computer inconveniently “stopped working last year”.

Read earlier posts of mine on the subject here and here.