Confirmed: Prime Minister Has Copy Of Egrant Inquiry In Hand, Will Speak About It Today
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has a copy of the concluded inquiry into the Egrant allegations in his possession, Lovin Malta can confirm.
The Prime Minister will deliver a press conference later on this morning where he will give his initial reaction to the report, which is over 1,500 pages long. Indications, even on social media, strongly suggest the inquiry will clear Muscat and his wife Michelle.
Muscat and Attorney General Peter Grech dropped a political bombshell yesterday when they confirmed that magistrate Aaron Bugeja has concluded his inquiry after 15 months.
Grech confirmed the report is a “voluminous” one and that a detailed analysis of it is ongoing.
Muscat said he has asked Grech to publish the report as soon as he completes his review and that he will comment immediately afterwards.
The inquiry was requested by the Prime Minister last year when now-assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia wrote a blogpost claiming the offshore company Egrant – whose existence was revealed in the Panama Papers – was actually owned by his wife.
A declaration of trust declaring Muscat was the ultimate beneficial owner of Egrant was allegedly found in a safe inside Pilatus Bank by Maria Efimova – a former bank employee who has since fled to Greece.
However, Bugeja has not limited his inquiry to a verification of the Egrant claim but has expanded it into a full-blown investigation of alleged corruption and money laundering at Pilatus Bank – which has since started winding down after its chairman Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad was arrested in the United States.
After the Egrant story was published, then Opposition leader Simon Busuttil demanded the resignation of the Prime Minister, and several of Muscat’s supporters have now taken to social media to demand Busuttil’s resignation from Parliament if the inquiry proves the story was false.
Busuttil has not responded to a request for comment by Lovin Malta but several of his supporters are counter-arguing that any damning evidence against the Prime Minister’s wife could well have been spirited out of Malta by Ali Sadr. To back up this claim, they are referring to NET TV’s footage of the chairman leaving the bank with two suitcases on the night the Egrant story broke.
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