Persons and companies involved in the Venezuela-to-Iran bank fraud and sanctions-busting scheme, currently the subject of an indictment and prosecution in the United States, are connected to Pilatus Bank and Ali Sadr’s activities in Malta. In spite of vehement denials of the government that the US indictment of Ali Sadr had anything to do with [...]
I will oblige the prime minister and follow his advice, admiring the memorial to Dom Mintoff in Castille Place not as a monument to the past but as a monument to the present and the future. If journalism is my wife, history is my mistress. And I don’t publicly indulge in my thing on the [...]
The Southern New York District Court of the United States has yesterday approved the final list of bail conditions that Ali Sadr must satisfy for his pre-trial release pending his trial for bank fraud and sanctions busting in the US Federal Court in New York. Ali Sadr and 15 other signatories have to hand in [...]
Iris Rohmann, winner of the Daphne Caruana Galizia grant from the German Reporter Forum, brief the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom on her recent trip here. Read her report here.
There was another odd development in court today when the brothel-gate libel suits were being heard. Pawlu Lia and Edward Gatt filed an application on behalf of Chris Cardona’s secretary Joe Gerada who was also alleged to have been in the brothel. The application had a photo taken from a phone that is supposed to [...]
When Chris Cardona filed for libel against Daphne Caruana Galizia when she reported he was having three-way sex with his secretary and a prostitute he hired in a brothel, he planned to testify that at the time he was supposed to have been in flagrante delicto, he was elsewhere, such as alone in his hotel [...]
Retraction: August 4th, 2018 08:45 The below story covered In-Nazzjon's report of May 31st, 2018. My attention has been drawn to the fact that In-Nazzjon has since retracted the story accepting that its content was materially untrue. It has apologised to Mario Philip Azzopardi. This note is not being added on anyone's request. However, I [...]
MP Karol Aquilina this morning tabled evidence that showed that Ali Sadr set up a Maltese company to build "socials (sic) and mass housing projects". Ali Sadr is still the owner and director of Malta International Construction Company Limited, a Maltese company registered at the same address in Ta' Xbiex as Pilatus Bank. Ali Sadr [...]
The European Parliament yesterday again debated schemes selling ‘golden visas’, or as ours does the sale of passports, to people willing and able to pay for it. The discussion evolved exactly as you would have expected it. European citizenship is a joint responsibility of member states who are free to regulate access to their own [...]
Photo: REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko The story of the journalist who staged his own assassination in cooperation with the security authorities of Ukraine in order to prevent a real assassination from taking place leaves many mixed feelings. It proved a good opportunity for journalist-bashing as readers wrote in accusing journalists of being either gullible for [...]
Twitchcraft completed his latest mural at the Skatepark. Love the € sign in place of the cross on top of the dome in the background. Plenty more details to discover. And plenty of tower cranes. Read his Facebook post on it here.
It's spine chilling. It's painful to hear. It's a grave indictment. It's also true. Guy Verhofstadt was giving one of his European Parliament speeches that go around Whatsapp and Facebook as clickbait. It's true that surrounded by the staid, scripted and halting performances of MEPs it should be easier to stand out, the man's performances, [...]
At face value it's no more than a nuisance. People who for whatever reason would like for a Facebook post to be seen by less people report it to Facebook as 'abusive'. Facebook, with little time to make direct value judgements, errs on the side of caution and blocks posts just in case the report [...]
A corporate lawyer who worked on managing the winding-down of insolvent companies was shot dead in the Latvian capital early on Wednesday in what police said appeared to be a killing linked to organized crime. Reuters quoted Latvian Police saying Martins Bunkus was shot by two men as he drove through the surburbs of Riga [...]
Maria Efimova spoke yesterday at a whistleblowers conference and was interviewed by Euronews. See the interview here. "My motive is to show these people; who feel powerfull, who possess all the wealth and believe they can do whatever they want, is that things are not like that. There is always God to judge them. God [...]
I worked in political positions for PN governments for almost 17 years. Before that I ran twice on the centre-right ticket for the national union of students. I contested the parliamentary elections on the PN ticket in 2013. So for a long time I’ve done a lot to earn the tribal assumption that I’m PN. [...]
Kris Bajada is being chased for payments of over €110,000 for luxury cars he purchased from car dealer J. Zammit Limited a company owned by James Zammit who owns Raymond Auto Dealer of Żebbuġ. Kris Bajada published photographs of himself in the Mercedes SL350, one of the luxury cars he procured from Raymond Auto Dealer [...]
This too is corruption. Not the bribes in a brown envelope sort of corruption. But the sort of corruption where institutions are destroyed, checks and balances knocked down and the complete hold of the executive on every branch of government is so blatant that barely anyone bats an eyelid anymore. Opposition MPs Claudette Buttigieg and [...]
Arkady Babchenko is yet another journalist killed right outside his home. He left his apartment in Kiev to buy bread and was shot several times in his back by a killer who waited outside for him. His wife found him bleeding outside there door. He died in the ambulance. Arkady Babchenko was living in Kiev [...]
Busy Mater Dei medical professionals are taking up duties in Gozo to keep the hospital there in business bridging the gap until doctors are recruited permanently for the hospital there. I have spoken to Martin Balzan of the Medical Association of Malta who clarified who will be taking up duties in Gozo in the current [...]