The company that had rented the Bahamas villa for John Dalli's infamous trips to the Caribbean nation when he was an EU Commissioner, and which has been registered at Mr Dalli's own Portomaso address since it was first set up in February 2011, has appointed new directors who have been implicated in fraudulent activities, this newspaper has learnt.

Robert Mitchell McIvor, who was appointed as a director of the company in December 2014, has had something of a chequered past marked with highly questionable schemes. His appointment late last year to the company, Tyre Limited, in which Mr Dalli's two daughters had previously served as directors and company secretary, along with a certain Dragi Emseriev, has cast further suspicions on the company and its activities.

Robert Mitchell McIvor, who was appointed director of Tyre Limited three months ago, has been involved in the highly dubious operations of the Exousia Foundation and the China Foundation, where he was associated with Charles Spradlin and Robert Earl Palm. The China Foundation is not to be confused with The China Foundation USA, which former American president Gerald Ford had once chaired.

While the Exousia Foundation has now reportedly been dissolved, the man appointed as a new director of Tyre Limited, Robert Mitchell McIvor, had served as its chief financial officer and director.

According to Canadian press reports from 2010, Robert Mitchell McIvor and Robert Palm, a former Pentecostal minister - both from British Columbia - are key figures in two highly dubious Christian humanitarian foundations based in Indiana, USA.

Mr Palm served as a director for the China Foundation and Mr McIvor served as its chief financial officer and economist.

The China Foundation holds the goal of ensuring that "every person on earth has their physical, financial and spiritual needs met". To this end, the China Foundation, partnered with the Exousia Foundation has made some incredibly outlandish claims in the past, such as an extensive list of projects it was to undertake through funding of between five hundred trillion to one thousand trillion US dollars (US$500,000,000,000,000 and US$1,000,000,000,000,000)

One particular project listed by the foundation was to allocate US$540,000,000,000,000+ to 193 nations for 'Economic and Humanitarian Development Projects.

The foundations jointly describe the project as follows:

"With God's blessing, it is our goal to fund every nation which is willing to receive, be recommended and approved by the United States, State Department and the Federal Reserve, starting with the USA. Plans included are vast Economic, Humanitarian, and Christian Philanthropic Development Projects Worldwide at an estimated cost of Five Hundred Trillion to One Thousand Trillion United States Dollars. Projects allowed by the powers-to-be referenced above will feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, take care of widows and orphans, and stimulate the economies of every city, town and village in all nations; Types of projects include - but are not limited to - mining, housing construction, health, farming, roads, rails, highways, bridges, water purification and reservoir construction."

On the China Foundation's website, Mr McIvor said that "over the centuries, God has set aside massive wealth, which is in our foundations' Global Master Cash and CHIPS Accounts, for such a time as this, to provide for the general welfare of all peoples of all nations."

Noble aims indeed, but exactly where all that money came from is not explained.

Mr McIvor said the funds are disbursed through "participating qualified governments or institutions" for development projects costing at least $1 billion each. Exactly who these participating organisations are not explained either.

Mr McIvor said that, to disburse the funds, the foundation needs "participating qualified governments or institutions [which] must have at least one qualified banker with the knowledge of and access to the Central Grey and Black Screens. If you do not know what this is, you must find out on your own; we cannot educate you. I can tell you that this is the highest level of Central Banking in the world."

In addition to the China Foundation, Mr McIvor and Mr Palm are also directors of the Exousia Foundation, a non-profit corporation that purportedly works with the China Foundation to "further the funding of worldwide philanthropic, humanitarian, and economic development projects ... in the name of Jesus Christ".

The president and chief executive officer of both foundations is Charles Spradlin, a minister who runs the foundations from his home in Indiana.

But according to press reports, the group represents a veritable rogues' gallery of fraudsters.

Polish farmers defrauded of US$37.3 million

In the mid 1990s, Mr Palm had masterminded a 'humanitarian scheme' that defrauded Polish farmers of $37.3 million. Polish prosecutors criminally charged him, but were unable to arrest him because Canada did not have an extradition treaty with Poland.

The farmers sued Mr Palm in the British Columbian Supreme Court and were awarded the full $37.3 million, but were reportedly never able to collect. Mr McIvor had been implicated in the scheme, but wasn't criminally charged or named as a defendant in the civil action.

Their cohort Mr Spradlin also has a dubious past. He declared personal bankruptcy in 1994. In the late 1990s, he promoted a "Y2K compliant generator" that he claimed produced twice as much electricity as it takes to run. He referred to it as 'God's witty invention'. Regulators weren't quite so enthusiastic. Attorney Generals in several US states issued cease-and-desist orders against the company and the supposed product's inventor, Dennis Lee.

In 2007, the Indiana Department of Insurance issued a cease-and-desist order against Mr Spradlin on account of a dubious life insurance scheme that he was promoting to his congregation. When Indianapolis Star reporter John Russell asked about the matter, Mr Spradlin had reportedly accused him of "doing the dirty work of Satan".

Mr McIvor, meanwhile, seems to have evaded prosecution altogether but is said to be on British Columbia's Securities Commission's and Canadian police's market intelligence radars.

Dalli's Bahamas trips

The International Herald Tribune - a sister paper to the New York Times - in July 2013 revealed that Mr Dalli gone on a number of trips to the Bahamas in summer 2012 when he was an EU commissioner.

The IHT quoted Mr Dalli as saying that he travelled to the Caribbean as part of efforts to arrange financing for a philanthropic project, which he said was "very confidential" and which aimed to help people in Africa.

Mr Dalli later said at a press briefing in Malta that he travelled to the Bahamas three times in 2012: in July, August and September.  The lease was revealed to have been for one year, and that it was signed on behalf of Tyre Ltd, a company involved in the trading of precious metals. 

Mr Dalli noted that Tyre Ltd rented the villa as it was the coordinator of discussions on the charitable project, adding that although the company was a commercial one, it also had charitable aims as it sought to source gold from independent miners in Africa to ensure that they received a fair price denied to them by the mining cartels.

Mr Dalli did not rule out any future involvement by Tyre Ltd in the sustainable business projects the charitable venture will include, pointing out that the company shared similar aims. But he stressed that there were no commitments at present.

He said that this project was still being drawn up and that information about it was very sensitive.

The general idea, Mr Dalli said , was to set up sustainable economic projects in various sectors - he mentioned farming, mining, oil and energy as examples - in various African countries, which would create jobs and foster economic growth in the local community.

The prioritised projects alone, he said, would create 28,000 direct jobs and 115,000 indirect jobs, assist 13 million poor people and feed and educate seven million children. He said that at this stage, the countries of operation envisaged are Ethiopia, Nigeria and Ghana - the Niger Delta, an oil-rich region of southern Nigeria, was also included in the list of countries - all very much along the lines that the China  and Exousia foundations had described in their five hundred trillion to one thousand trillion plan.

The question is: through his association with Tyre Limited and its new director is Mr Dalli being had, or is he having people on?

Click here to see McIvor’s preposterous multi-trillion dollar plans to ‘save the world’