In my concluding article in the series entitled ‘Overdue compensation to National Bank of Malta shareholders’ (TMIS, 24 November) I gave reasons why it would definitely be my final input on the subject.
Dr Piero Ugolini and Richard Nun took advantage of what I said by a cowardly act of hitting me below the belt (TMIS Curmi and NBM – A Pinocchio Story). I am saying this because they now attribute to me what they allege to be untruths. In this regard, I reserve whatever legal rights are open to me for what is clearly an attempt at defamation.
In previous articles they claimed that their opinions were facts, whilst my own remarks regarding this saga were mere fiction. Now they have the audacity (that word again!) of claiming some God-given right to be the only ones telling the truth and, to rub salt in the wound, they have chosen a title for their article which smacks of bad taste and a cowardly attitude on finding themselves with their backs to the wall.
I refuse to be drawn again into disputing their allegations (on which I have already expressed my opinion at length) but will simply draw readers’ attention to what has prompted me – since my first opinion piece on this subject – to persist with this crusade to see justice for NBM shareholders after 47 years. This is evidently much to the irritation of Ugolini and Nun, as government’s advisers, who came on the scene very late in the day whilst I was there in the thick of it with my ears to the ground in 1973.
I reiterate that the foreign experts seem unable to accept the fact, more than five years ago, the Constitutional Court, the highest court in Malta, decreed that value had passed without compensation from NBM shareholders to the government – and eventually for the benefit of Bank of Valletta. It is the amount of compensation that still needs to be decided by the court.
I will avoid comment on the reasons why it took so long for a panel of three local professionals to be appointed by the court in recent weeks but will reiterate the plea I made in my penultimate article, i.e. that the foreign experts now allow the panel members to work in tranquillity, thus paving the way for the court’s decision on the amount of compensation payable by the government to NBM shareholders.
Anthony R. Curmi