GUEST POST: How Malta’s Political Crisis Is Linked To A Group Close To Nigel Farage
As the political crisis in Malta continues to intensify with daily calls made for the Prime Minister to resign and his Chief of Staff investigated over the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, fresh information has added a new twist to the tale.
According to The BylineTimes, Adrian Agius, one of the brothers who Matthew Caruana Galizia has named as a suspect in supplying the bomb that killed his mother, is part of a group which paid €200,000 in donations to the European Alliance for Freedom and its foundation, the European Freedom Foundation.
The European Alliance for Freedom, a now-defunct European political party of Eurosceptics whose registered office was in Malta, had strong links to Nigel Farage, who now leads the Brexit Party in the UK.
The Byline Times article that a member of the group which donated money to the EAF is Ryan Schembri, a Maltese businessman who used to co-own the More Supermarkets and who fled Malta in 2014 after amassing some €40 million in debt.
Schembri is also the cousin of the Prime Minister’s former Chief of Staff Keith Schembri, who Yorgen Fenech – the main suspect in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia – has implicated as being part of the murder.
Both Adrian Agius and Ryan Schembri were directors in companies which made large donations to the EAF and its foundation.
Slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia had written extensively on both Agius and Schembri as well as their links with the European Alliance for Freedom.
The local connection continues with the fact that the General Secretary of the EAF was Sharon Ellul Bonici, a one-time Labour Party MEP candidate and also allegedly a close friend of Ryan Schembri.
The auditor for the EAF/EFF was Joe Sammut, a former Labour Party Treasurer.
Sammut was arraigned in 2015 on several charges including professional breach of duties, money laundering, fraud, forgery and misappropriation.
He was also implicated in obtaining EU passports for Libyan businessmen and allegedly held the vast sum of over €90 million at Bank of Valletta in the name of Mutassim Gaddafi, one of the sons of the late Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, of which he was also the family accountant. It appears that the EAF/EFF accounts were managed by this same bank branch.
Ellul Bonici is known to have been a friend and close associate of Nigel Farage for over two decades.
The latter raised money for her NO2EU campaign in 2003 when Malta was voting in a Referendum to join the European Union. Farage had lobbied unsuccessfully to get his party, UKIP into the EAF but eventually installed his loyal friend, Geoffrey Bloom as its first President in 2011 with Ellul Bonici as Secretary General. Other Farage loyalist Jane Fuller and his long-time girlfriend Annabelle Fuller (Sanderson) also served as President and General Secretary of the EAF respectively.
The EAF was disbanded in 2016.
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