Whistleblowers Maria Efimova and Jonathan Ferris have gone head to head after a magisterial inquiry found no evidence that Michelle Muscat, the wife of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, owned the Panama company Egrant.
The full inquiry has yet to be published, however thus far only 50 out of the 1,500-page inquiry have been published.
Maria Efimova is the Pilatus Bank Whistleblower, who allegedly leaked information to assassinated Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia regarding Egrant and its ownership. The Magisterial inquiry, however, did not back her claims.
Jonathan Ferris is a former FIAU Inspector who was looking into the Panama Papers. Ferris argues that up until April 2017, he was trusted by the FIAU to supervise investigations into government officials, yet after the general elections were announced, he was removed from this and pushed aside by the same organisation he was previously trusted by. He said that after the elections, on 16 June, his employment was terminated without reason and with immediate effect. “This was a few days after the Finance Minister came out with his theory that the FIAU reports were written with an aim to be leaked.”
Ferris told Lovin Malta in a recent interview “I won’t comment on the Egrant report because I haven’t even read it yet, but if you had to ask me what I think about Efimova, I can say she had invented things from A to Z about me, including that I had induced a miscarriage,” Ferris told Lovin Malta. “I’m angrier than anyone that she hasn’t been extradited to Malta because I still have a pending case against her.”
Ferris and Efimova have a bit of a history, where Efimova had filed a defamation case against him. Ferris was one of the officers to first arrest Efimova and charge her with misappropriation from Pilatus bank. She also stood accused of making defamatory statements against him.
A few minutes after Lovin Malta published Ferris’ comment, Efimova, in a tweet, said: “Shame on you, Jonathan Ferris. How low one can get? Crooks' doormat, you've put me through the hell, and you are trying to make even more damage. Two months ago you were ready to come to Athens to testify in my favour, remember?”
In late November 2017, Ferris was interviewed by blogger Manuel Delia,with the report reading: “Jonathan Ferris speaks of how an attempt was made by the authorities to involve him in an effort to discredit whistle-blower Maria Efimova who first spoke of payments from the Aliyev family to the Muscat family. He also speaks how after he refused to participate in the frame-up of Efimova he was taken off investigations into information leaked by the Panama Papers.”
In that interview Ferris spoke of how he was instructed not to investigate the Panama situation due to an alleged conflict of interest due to the situation, to which he argued that there would have been a conflict if he had not arrested her, and not because he was doing his duty.
Efimova's husband, Pantelis Varnavas, has tweeted that Ferris had sent an affidavit stating that Pilatus officials were present during her interrogation, and that his wife was intimidated.