Former FIAU Inspector And Egrant Whistleblower Say They Fear For Their Lives In Malta
Left: Maria Efimova during an interview with the Malta Independent; Right: Jonathan Ferris during an interview with the Times of Malta
A former police inspector at the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit has warned The Times (UK) he is fearing for his life in Malta, a warning echoed by the Russian whistleblower behind claims the Prime Minister’s wife owns a secret offshore company.
Jonathan Ferris has claimed he was sacked from the FIAU during his probationary period because the agency was scared he was going to uncover the damning truth behind the reports the Prime Minister’s wife Michelle Muscat owns the offshore company Egrant.
“[The FIAU] are scared of me because I have a photographic memory,” he told The Times.
Ferris warned he is “being followed” in the streets, which has concerned him enough to make contingency plans for damning information on Pilatus Bank in his possession in case he gets murdered.
Now working as a security manager at a hotel, Ferris said: “I feel safe here, but in the event of my death, all the information I have will be released.”
Former FIAU inspector Jonathan Ferris. Photo: Times of Malta
Meanwhile, the Russian whistleblower Maria Efimova has reiterated her stance that she led Malta to an unknown location after last June’s general election. because she feared for her life on the island.
“If I go back to Malta now I will not be alive for very long,” Maria Efimova told the Times.
Efimova used to work at the Ta’ Xbiex-based Pilatus Bank as the executive secretary of chairman Seyed Ali Sadr. She was fired in March 2016 and later sued the bank for not paying her wages. Pilatus Bank fought back and charged Efimova with misappropriating funds, and the courts recently issued a European and international arrest warrant against her after she failed to turn up to consecutive sittings.
“I said I would go to Malta’s financial intelligence analysis unit and tell them everything,” she told The Times. “They fired me ten days later.”
Maria Efimova used to work as a secretary at Ta’Xbiex-based Pilatus Bank
In April, Efimova stunned the nation 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.
Joseph Muscat decried the claim as the “biggest lie in Malta’s political history” and called a snap election, which he won by a landslide.
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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