Bartolo calls for MFSA inquiry into Maugeri-Sib money laundering claims

Labour shadow minister for education Evarist Bartolo is insisting on an inquiry by the Malta Financial and Services Authority into the alleged money laundering of €15 million from an Italian research foundation, to a Maltese firm.

The allegations emanate from Italian magistrates' investigations into money laundering from the Salvatore Maugeri foundation in Italy, to Sib Laboratories, a company registered in Malta involved in research and science.

The revelations have seen the University of Malta and the Malta Council for Science and Technology terminate partnership agreements with Sib Laboratories.

Bartolo today said that Malta's enforcement against money laundering was "weak", as confirmed in a report by the European Council released last week on the national institutions set up to combat financial irregularities.

The Labour MP also said documentation exists that shows the €15 million transfer was handled by Bank of Valletta, and claimed contacts between Italian and Maltese counterparts are underpinned by membership in the ecclesial movement Communion and Liberation. Bartolo added that the transfer was effected by Italian firm Periplo, which he pointed was derivative of the Greek 'periplous' meaning "circumnavigation".

"From the Sib Laboratories accounts, we see that of the €15 million only three million euros were actually invested in research incentives. What has happened to the other €12 million?" Bartolo asked.

The Labour MP also highlighted the presence of Lawrence Gonzi's son David as company secretary of Sib Laboratories' holding company Sib Limited. "The Prime Minister's son has been used as a contact so as to blind authorities to the possibility of any irregularities in the operations of these firms."

Gonzi has told MaltaToday that he took over as company secretary in 2010 from James Scerri Worley and that has had no knowledge of any commercial activity by Sib Laboratories. Sib Limited and its subsidiary Sib Laboratories were originally set up by Peralta Custodian in 2008, with its directors being Milan accountant Gianfranco Parricchi, and one of Peralta's lawyers, James Scerri Worley. When Scerri Worley left Peralta to set up his own legal firm, he took the management of Sib Laboratories with him. So the commercial arm of the company today is managed by Scerri Worley, Mario Barthet and Parricchi, but the holding company is still in the name of Peralta Custodian, and its new company secretary is David Gonzi.

"It looks like this company is a front in what is ostensibly a respectable industry, because there are serious suspicions of money laundering and misappropriation of funds.

"The question is what are the authorities doing to safeguard the integrity of our financial services industry, when the Prime Minister has been so sensitive to Malta's reputation since he last questioned the Opposition leader's visit to Libya," Bartolo said. "Even the Salvatore Maugeri foundation is holding its own inquiry."

Labour's online newspaper maltastar.com has been keen to point out that the Maugeri scandal uses a "complex web of connections" that involves Catholic contacts in Communion and Liberation, freemasons, university leaders and "well-connected persons that open doors".

Bartolo even said Roberto Formigoni, the president of the Lombardy region in Italy who is embroiled in the investigations into the Maugeri foundation and the financial disembowelment of the Mount Tabor foundation in Milan, had "personal friends" in the Nationalist cabinet. "I don't know whether they would admit to being his friend," Bartolo said without naming the alleged ministers.

The specifics are unknown, but Milan magistrates believe the Maugeri foundation's consultants like entrepreneur Piero Daccò used his firms in Austria, Luxembourg and Malta - ostensibly Sib Laboratories - to fund "inexistent" projects such as studies on life on Mars and developing medical patents in Russia, and then funnelling the money back to his offshore accounts.

The scandal was blown wide open on 23 March 2011, when the Mount Tabor foundation - the Catholic charity that runs the San Raffaele hospital in Milan - revealed it had run into €1,500 million in debt. An inquiry into the San Raffaele debt resulted in the arrest of Piero Daccò, the entrepreneur and member of the lay Catholic conservative lobby Communion and Liberation.

The inquiry then resulted in the uncovering of a €56 million money-laundering system by the Maugeri Foundation, an institution in the field of biomedical research in Italy, resulting in the arrests last week of the Lombardy region's former assessor in charge of health Antonio Simone and five others. Daccò has already been charged with corruption and bribery in the San Raffaele debt scandal and is now to be charged over the Maugeri money laundering operation.