Former Nationalist Party leader Simon Busuttil has requested a ruling from the Deputy Speaker of the House after the Speaker, Anglu Farrugia, stopped two Parliamentary Questions from being made about the Prime Minister’s chief of staff on the basis that they are not in the public interest.
Busuttil put forward two Parliamentary Questions asking whether the PM’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, has a bank account in Dubai and whether he has a bank account at Pilatus Bank, Ta Xbiex.
The former PN leader said that these questions were stopped by the Speaker, on the basis that the information is not in the public’s interest. After asking the Speaker to reconsider his decision, Farrugia stuck to his guns and refused to allow the PQs.
Busuttil also asked for the deputy speaker to make the ruling in the light of the fact that the decision directly relates to the Speaker himself, and him taking the decision “goes against all basic principles of justice”.
Busuttil took issue with the idea that the PM’s chief of staff having bank accounts Dubai, or Pilatus Bank, not being something of public interest.
“We are in Malta after all, not Pyonyang,” he told the House.
Speaker Farrugia denied the request for the deputy speaker to decide on the ruling, telling Busuttil that he can always appeal the decision.
The significance of Schembri’s offshore holdings relates to a series of revelations about the PM’s right-hand man, such as his acquisition of a Panama company sheltered by a New Zealand trust, together with his colleague Minister Konrad Mizzi just weeks after the Labour Party were elected into power.
Pilatus Bank was given prominence after the now assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia alleged that top government officials had used the bank as a vehicle for illicit transactions.
A leaked Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) report showed that serious shortcomings continued to subsist at Pilatus Bank, however another leaked report months later said the shortcomings had been addressed.
Caruana Galizia alleged that the PM’s wife is the true owner behind Egrant, the third Panama company in connection with Malta through the Panama Papers leaks, and that she received $1 million from one of the daughters of Ilham Aliyev, the Azerbaijani dictator through Pilatus Bank. All involved deny wrongdoing.
All denied wrongdoing while the bank even began legal proceedings by suing Caruana Galizia for $40 million in Arizona, USA, shortly before she was brutally murdered. Pilatus Bank has threatened all independent media houses in Malta with law suits worth millions in the USA and the UK for covering the Caruana Galizia’s allegations.