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PN Is Siding With Criminals, Jason Azzopardi Warns After Joe Giglio Casts Doubt On Maria Efimova

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Former Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi said his former party is “siding with criminals and corrupt people” after PN MP Joe Giglio said he has serious reservations over the credibility of former Pilatus Bank employee Maria Efimova.

“Today the PN publicly defended a corrupt bank and its corrupt directors,” Azzopardi said. “Rather than criticise the police commissioner, the FCID and the Attorney General for not obeying a magistrate’s order to charge all the bank’s directors with bribery and corruption, following an inquiry that cost €7.5 million, the PN defended this corrupt bank and praised the Attorney General.”

“This is a dark day in the PN’s glorious history; it is siding with corrupt people and criminals.”

Azzopardi went on to warn that unless the party changes tack, it risks denying its own past and becoming irrelevant to people’s lives.

Meanwhile, Repubblika president Robert Aquilina said the NGO won’t cower to Giglio after the MP played down Repubblika’s political relevance by arguing that “political parties are larger than NGOs”.

“We brought down a corrupt Prime Minister,” Aquilina said, a reference to how Joseph Muscat resigned in 2019 in the wake of a political crisis that triggered widespread street protests.

“We weren’t scared of Joseph Muscat’s populism or Keith Schembri’s bullying, nor were we impressed by Konrad Mizzi’s lies or scared of the corrupt leadership of the police force,” he said. “We couldn’t care less about Yorgen Fence’s power and dirty money and we didn’t swallow the lies of the Pilatus Bank criminals.”

“Do you think we’ll be impressed by a criminal lawyer’s bullying? If he wants to stand up for criminals and try to mock those who try to stop criminals with every breath they take, that’s up to him and we’ll value him for what he is… the tragedy is that he is using a constitutional position to do all of this.”

Giglio used to be defence lawyer of the now-defunct Pilatus Bank, which used to employ Maria Efimova, who had famously informed Caruana Galizia that the Panama company Egrant belonged to former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.

Maria Efimova

Maria Efimova

Interviewed on Andrew Azzopardi’s show on Malta’s Heart this morning, Giglio said he had “serious reservations” about Efimova’s credibility.

He recounted how, as Pilatus’ lawyer, he had received “substantial evidence” that Efimova had defrauded the bank off €1,000 to book a hotel stay for her relatives and that her subsequent claims that the bank hadn’t paid her wages were baseless.

Giglio described Efimova as a “malevolent” woman who “manipulates facts” and said that while he hoped she was telling the truth about Egrant, the subsequent magisterial inquiry gave rise to further doubts over her credibility. 

In 2018, a magisterial inquiry found no evidence linking Egrant to Muscat or his family, contradictions in Efimova’s and Caruana Galizia’s testimonies, and falsified signatures in alleged declarations of trust that were handed to him by then Malta Independent editor-in-chief Pierre Portelli.

Cover photo: From left: PN MP Joe Giglio, PN leader Bernard Grech, former PN MP Jason Azzopardi

READ NEXT: PN MP Karol Aquilina Calls Out Joe Giglio For ‘Insulting Daphne Caruana Galizia’s Memory’ 

Tim is interested in the rapid evolution of human society and is passionate about justice, human rights and cutting-edge political debates. You can follow him on Instagram or Twitter/X at @timdiacono or reach out to him at [email protected]

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