The government had not published the Egrant inquiry conclusions in full in July 2018, leaving out significant details that appear in the last pages of the 1,500 page document.
49 pages of conclusions were published by the Attorney General on 22 July 2018, with these conclusions saying that the inquiry did not find evidence that the third Panama company belonged to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat or his wife Michelle, or that the PM’s wife had received a $1.07 million payment into a Dubai account. It also found that declaration of trust handed to Magistrate Aaron Bugeja contained falsified signatures.
However, with the full report on the Egrant inquiry now published, it is now evident that 50 pages of the inquiry’s conclusions went unpublished.
Besides the primary conclusions as mentioned above, Magistrate Aaron Bugeja – who is now a judge – reached other conclusions which he felt required action.
Page 1452 of the inquiry – which is incidentally a single page after the conclusions published by the Attorney General in 2018 end – notes straight away that the pre-requisites for magisterial inquiries into Willerby Inc and into Adrian Hillman had been satisfied.
Willerby Trade Inc was incorporated in the British Virgin Islands on 19 March 2013 by Nexia BT’s Brian Tonna, a week after Joseph Muscat and Keith Schembri took up their official positions at the Office of the Prime Minister.
PM Joseph Muscat addresses a press conference shortly after the publication of the Egrant inquiry conclusions, on 22 July 2018
Bugeja also refers in his conclusions to a court application filed by Simon Busuttil in July 2017 through which it was found that there are the required pre-requisites for an inquiry to be opened into separate allegations, some of which related to facts mentioned within this report.
Significantly, Bugeja calls into question the testimony of Nexia BT’s Karl Cini saying that he left out details from his testimony, and said that the Police Commissioner should investigate the discrepancies in his testimony with the evidence because it seems like there may have been a false testimony on his part.
Bugeja notes that Cini failed to say that he had set up companies called Colson, Selson, Lester, SPX, Blue Sea, Torbridge, and Berdil. Bugeja also notes that Cini had failed to state that he had set up a company called Real Trade Investments Global Corp in Panama – even though he had testified that it was set up in the British Virgin Islands.
The conclusions also make mention of the testimonies of Jonathan Ferris and Maria Efimova, along with a orders for transfer from BTI Management – a company owned by Nexia BT.