“I have never been questioned or been asked to be interrogated by the police or any other law enforcement authority throughout my life”, Yorgen Fenech told a foreign media outlet when questioned about the Dubai-based company 17 Black.

Questioned by the Swedish media outlet Dagens Nyheter (DN) about 17 Black, in relation to an investigation that the news outlet was carrying out into the ownership structures of several igaming companies which target Sweden, Fenech said that the revelations with regards to 17 Black – a company set up and based in Dubai – were “speculation that lacks evidence”, but he did not confirm or deny the claims that he is the owner of the controversial company.

“I do not know of any police investigation in my case”, Fenech is reported to have told DN.

Yorgen Fenech’s name was thrust into the limelight mid-way last November, when Reuters and the Times of Malta reported that he was the owner of the Dubai-based company 17 Black, a company which was named as one of two which would pay $2 million into the Panama companies belonging to government minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Keith Schembri. 

Besides being the CEO of Tumas Group – Yorgen Fenech is also the director of Electrogas, the firm which operated Malta’s new gas-fired power station.  The power station was a key electoral pledge in Labour’s campaign to take government in 2013 and was under Konrad Mizzi’s remit back when he was Energy Minister.

Days after this revelation, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici addressed Parliament and said that a magisterial inquiry the sole focus of which was 17 Black had been opened weeks before the revelations on the company’s ownership were published.

The inquiry, which was requested by the police force, was opened some weeks prior to the revelations and was – at the time – ongoing, Bonnici said on 19 November last year.  It is being led by Magistrate Charmaine Galea, Bonnici had said.

On 7 January this year, Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar refused to answer whether 17 Black was under investigation, telling The Times of Malta instead that the police could not inform the people about each and every case being probed, including those of public interest.  He did, however, add that “every case that is referred to the police, both by individuals as well as by other entities, is investigated.”

Fenech’s answers to DN come in the wake of a European Parliament Money Launder Committee hearing on 17 Black, where Minister Bonnici was amongst those who were questioned.  In the hearing, Maltese and Dutch MEPs both said that the links between the company and Malta’s top politicians must be investigated as it may be of importance for the investigation of the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.

To this, Fenech said that he is not aware of comments by MEPs, telling DN; “I do not know that I would have been mentioned in any of this, which would be false, impoverished and obviously slander”.

DN reports another angle, however.  The Swedish outlet writes that one of those charged with murdering Daphne Caruana Galizia had, “according to a parallel police investigation into money laundering, gambled millions on, among other things, casinos in Malta owned by Yorgen Fenech”.

The Maltese court in fact heard last September how Alfred Degiorgio – one of the three accused of the murder – had gambled €570,000 over the years, losing €71,000.

 

Fenech named as co-owner of gaming company caught violating Norwegian law

The focus of DN’s reportage was on delving into new information made public as a result of legislative changes pertaining to gaming companies targeting Swedish customers. 

The Swedish news outlet reported that Yorgen Fenech is, in fact, one of the co-owners of a Malta-based iGaming firm called L & L Europe Limited, which is one of four companies which were caught violating Norwegian laws by marketing online casinos and betting services in the country without permission.

L & L Europe Ltd, while based in Malta, is one of 67 companies which hold a Swedish license allowing their online casinos or other gaming sites to target Swedish residents.  In fact, out of these 67 companies – a total of 51 of them are based in Malta. 

The need for such a license was implemented at the beginning of this year.  In granting it, the Swedish Gaming Inspectorate tests whether the companies live up to the Swedish requirements for, among other things, gaming responsibility, money laundering regulation and financial accounting. The owners and company executives must also be examined by the authority, which assesses whether they are suitable.

As part of the new legislation, there is now a completely new insight into the gaming companies and their owners. Despite the fact that the companies themselves had requested that the authority should keep company structures and their owners secret, the information is in many cases now public.

It is through this information that the Swedish media outlet Dagens Nyheter (DN) came to notice that one of the co-owner of a specific company with a Swedish license, L & L Europe Ltd, was of note.

Indeed, DN reported that one of the co-owners of the company – which holds a license to operate online games on 14 different sites – is Yorgen Fenech.

DN reports that the information that Yorgen Fenech is one of the owners of a gaming company has, until now, been completely unknown, and notes that his ownership had been kept a secret by request from the company itself.  The news outlet notes that another of the partners behind L & L Europe Ltd also has “direct links” to Yorgen Fenech and is the head of several companies connected to Tumas Group.

Fenech himself confirmed via e-mail that he is one of the owners behind the company, stating that it has been a private investment alongside Tumas Group for several years.

Johan Röhr from Sweden’s Gaming Inspectorate who granted L&L Europe’s Swedish gaming license said that the company had been assessed based on the documents submitted by the company itself and that the information about Yorgen Fenech had not had any significance, noting that Fenech had not been convicted of anything.

This being said, however, L & L Europe Ltd is one of four companies that was granted a Swedish license despite being caught in the sights of the Norwegian Gaming Inspectorate.

In fact, in November 2018 – while the Swedes were in process of approving the companies – the Norwegian authority was clamping down on them for offering online games to Norwegians without the necessary permission, saying that payments to the companies through Norwegian banks and financial institutions were banned as they were in violation of the Scandinavian country’s lottery and gaming laws.

“We have not examined L&L Europe more closely, but we note that payment transactions from Norway have gone to that company in violation of Norwegian law. Therefore, we have ordered the banks to stop these transfers”, Monica Alisøy Kjelsnes, senior advisor at the Norwegian Gaming Inspectorate, said.

Another company named alongside L & L Europe Ltd in this regard by DN was BML Group Limited, which is behind several large online casinos such as Betsson. 

DN write that their investigation into the data recently made public also shows that several of the companies that have been licensed use legal representatives to hide their real owners.

The Swedish paper cites L & L Europe as an example, saying that it is owned by several different agent companies. One of them, based in Gibraltar, has, according to the Swedish Tax Agency, been used by Swedes to evade tax in Sweden, DN writes.

On their part, the Swedish Gaming Inspectorate said that they were aware that several now-licensed gaming companies had previously violated rules, but told DN that the issue had been dealt with when preparing for the newly implemented gaming laws in the country.

Swedish Gaming Inspectorate chief legal counsel Johan Röhr, however, sounded a warning and said that if these violations were to continue, it could have an impact on the issuance of the company’s license to target Swedish customers.