Prime Minister Says He Last Met Yorgen Fenech, Owner Of 17 Black, Around A Year Ago
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat has confirmed he last met up with Yorgen Fenech, the businessman who owns the Dubai company 17 Black, around a year ago.
Doorstepped by Times of Malta this evening about the last time he met Fenech, Muscat responded: “A year ago, I think. I’m not certain. Two years? This is what, November, right? I think it was a year ago then, just as I meet with people in all business sectors.”
It was just over a year ago that it was revealed that Fenech was the owner of 17 Black, one of two Dubai companies that, according to a leaked email, were supposed to transfer large sums of money into the Panama companies of OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri and Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi.
The identity of the second company, Macbridge, remains a mystery but Schembri last year confirmed that both it and 17 Black had been included in draft business plans for his business group as potential clients.
Times of Malta asked Muscat flat-out whether he has tried asking his chief of staff who owns Macbridge, but the Prime Minister decided not to give a straight answer.
“I don’t know, ask the owner or whoever has that information… but I don’t have [the information],” he said. When the journalist countered that Schembri must have that information, Muscat responded: “Then I think he was asked that in the magisterial inquiry and that he provided all the information.”