MEPs Investigating Malta’s Rule Of Law Set To Speak To Runaway Egrant Whistleblower
The Russian whistleblower behind claims the Prime Minister’s wife owns the mysterious offshore Panama company Egrant will speak to a committee of MEPs investigating the rule of law in Malta, The Shift News has revealed.
Citing sources, The Shift said the committee – chaired by Socialist MEP Ana Gomes – will convene on Monday in Strasbourg to speak to Maria Efimova via video conference.
When asked by Lovin Malta during the MEPs’ visit to Malta two weeks ago, Gomes said the committee would be open to speaking to Efimova if the whistleblower wants to meet them.
“What I can say right now is that while people aren’t being prosecuted for corruption in Malta, the whistleblower was prosecuted very quickly,” Gomes said.
The Maltese courts have ordered an international arrest warrant for Efimova after she repeatedly failed to turn up for a court case instigated against by her former employer Pilatus Bank, who is accusing her of misappropriating funds.
Her current whereabouts are unknown but she has told The Times of Malta and The Times of London that she fled the island after last June’s general election because she feared for her life here.
Portuguese MEP Ana Gomes is spearheading the European Parliament committee
Efimova stunned the nation last April when she released declarations of trust to now-assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia which appeared to show that the Prime Minister’s wife Michelle Muscat was the ultimate beneficiary owner of Egrant – a mysterious offshore company which had appeared in the Panama Papers alongside companies owned by tourism minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri. She said she had found the declarations of trust inside a safe which had been set up in the kitchen of Pilatus Bank.
More worryingly, Caruana Galizia reported that Egrant had received a payment of over €1 million from a Dubai company owned by Leyla Aliyeva, the daughter of Azerbaijan’s ruler Ilham Aliyev.
Shortly before she fled Malta after the June election, Efimova wrote to Joseph Muscat to accuse him of hiring a Russian detective to intimidate her father back in Moscow.
“If you have something against me, there is no need to hire a detective in Moscow to find out if my mother has really passed away,” the email – published on Caruana Galizia’s blog – read. “My father is 70, he has recently lost his beloved wife, and he is very upset about dodgy people coming to his house and intimidating him.”
After Caruana Galizia was assassinated in a car bomb last month, Efimova told the Times of Malta that the journalist should have fled Malta for her own safety as she herself had done.
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