A judge ordered that the Pilatus Bank nolle prosequi case, which NGO Repubblika opened against the Attorney General will be resumed in public, the NGO said in a statement.

In November 2022, a judge ordered that the case be continued behind closed doors so as not to violate the confidentiality of linked proceedings before a secretive foreign court with which Malta has no treaties.

However, on Tuesday a judge reversed this previous decision and decreed that the case must continue in public.

The case was initially ordered to be behind closed doors after AG Victoria Buttigieg and State Advocate Chris Soler made this request, and the court upheld the request until it ruled on whether it is bound by a decree issued by a private foreign court.

The Iranian owner of Pilatus Bank, Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad, launched an international legal bid to deter law enforcement authorities. Through a Hong Kong-based company, Alpene Ltd, which is owned by Ali Sadr, an urgent request to suspend the proceedings in Malta was filed in front of the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

In a statement, Repubblika noted how last December the AG received a letter from Hong Kong's International Arbitration, which the AG said showed that Malta and the court were bound not to carry out proceedings in public about Ali Sadr and/or the bank, the NGO said. However, the AG did not present this letter until 16 March, Repubblika said, arguing that the letter contradicted what the AG had said in November when making a request for the case to continue behind closed doors. 

The court said that the letter “appeared to be a clarification about how, and from whom, the tribunal’s eventual award… should be given publicity.”

The judge noted that the letter was not a decision by the ICSID and neither was it binding on how the Maltese courts should hold hearings.

This case began after, in December 2020, a magisterial inquiry concluded that criminal charges should be pressed against a number of high-ranking Pilatus Bank officials. Repubblika filed a case challenging the AG who had issued a nolle prosequi (an order not to charge) on all officials except money laundering reporting officer Claudanne Sant-Fournier and the bank itself.