Steward ‘Hired Spies To Carry Out Smear Campaign Against Chris Fearne’
Steward authorised a “spare-no-expenses” private intelligence operation, which also targeted former Health Minister Chris Fearne with “fake” corruption claims, the OCCRP has reported.
The OCCRP said it is in possession of emails, encrypted messages, and financial records which show that Steward paid $7 million (€6.5 million) for secret intelligence campaigns against its perceived opponents locally and overseas.
It was said to have engaged the services of London-based private intelligence companies Audere International and CT Group, both of which denied any wrongdoing when contacted.
Fearne, who served as Health Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, was said to be a key target of their intelligence operations.
In July 2022, CT Group allegedly sent Steward’s law firm Quinn Emanuel a proposal in which it pledged to “identify, evidentialise, and deploy into the public domain information about the main opponent of the client’s concession in Malta”. Further evidence showed that Fearne was “the main opponent”.
In September that year, then-CT Group director Will Crawford produced a brief note titled “Malta: Abuse of Passport Scheme”, alleging that Fearne had used his position to lobby for Maltese citizenship to be awarded to the brother of one of Vladimir Putin’s advisers in exchange for a bribe.
It claimed that a “fixer” for the adviser had forwarded €3.2 million to a bank account held by the daughter of Fearne’s former chief of staff Carmen Ciantar, and included a record of the “bank transfer”.
However, the record was dismissed as fake by Alex Cobham, CEO of UK-based NGO Tax Justice Network.
In 2023, Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation director Matthew Caruana Galizia received two tips from UK journalists about this briefing note. However, he grew concerned when the Austrian bank named in the record and the person who had allegedly transferred the money both told him the document was forged.
Caruana Galizia went on to publish an article warning that the stories targeting Fearne are likely to be false.
Fearne denounced the alleged disinformation campaign against him as an “attack on the very integrity and wellbeing of the Maltese State.”
“If confirmed it would not be coincidental that this disgusting act was carried out at a time when I was rigorously insisting on Steward fulfilling their contractual obligations,” he said, confirming he had asked the Maltese police to investigate the fake documents.
Ciantar said the experience was “devastating, both professionally and personally.”
“You can imagine the horrible sensation of facing these heinous public lies without knowing who is behind them,” she said.
A spokesperson for the police told OCCRP that “following police investigations, no evidence was found about the alleged matter that could lead to a criminal prosecution.”
Steward did not respond to their request for comment.
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