Gordon Debono and his wife, Yvette, are the latest figures to be charged in relation to a major smuggling investigation.

A third, Shawn Higgins, was also arraigned last night. They have been charged on various money-laundering and smuggling charges

Eleven companies and their assets belonging to the Debonos have been frozen.

Magistrate Farrugia Frendo turned down the request for bail, with the prosecution arguing that the money laundered tallies into the millions.

Gordon Debono has long been linked to fuel smuggling. He has previously been accused, along with Darren Debono, of being part of a fuel smuggling operation in the Mediterranean and has fallen under strong US sanctions. He was once arrested in 2017 after Libyan fuel smuggler Fahmi Slim Bin Khalifa was apprehended.

Debono has been in the news before, Last year, a probe into Satabank identified a series of payments amounting to €1.9 million between Gordon Debono and lawyer Arthur Azzopardi, who is out on police bail.

Sources have told Lovin Malta that the probe was central to investigations.

In November 2019, Debono pocketed at least €1.5 million after Malta’s courts sanctioned the transfer of the massive funds between his and his wife’s offshore companies, despite attempts to stop it by Malta’s financial regulator.

Central to the case is loans dished out between a Belize company called Oil and Ship Consultancy Limited and the Dubai-based International Properties and Investments Limited. Neither company was identified in the US sanctions list.

The Dubai company is owned by Yvette Debono, meanwhile, the Belize company is owned by her husband, Gordon. The €1.5 million loan was given to the Belizean company just a month before the arrest of Gordon Debono in Italy.

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