PN: Muscat zeal for CapitalOne inquiry should extend to Panamagate
Opposition says Prime Minister failed to launch inquiries into other scandals that damaged his administration
The Nationalist Party has called on the Prime Minister to show the same zeal with which he launched an inquiry into a side-lined police investigation into money laundering, into other scandals that have hit his government since its election in 2013.
The PN’s statements comes in the wake of the inquiry launched into a police investigation into CapitalOne Investment Group, a company once owned by Baltimore Fiduciary Services at a time when one of its director was Beppe Fenech Adami, today the PN’s deputy leader for party affairs.
At the time of the money laundering investigation in January 2013, Fenech Adami was serving as parliamentary assistant for home affairs.
The PN has hit back, insisting that Joseph Muscat should have held inquiries into countless other cases of political malfeasance, among them the offshore Panama companies opened by minister Konrad Mizzi and chief of staff Keith Schembri, and allegations of wrongdoing in the issuance of medical visas to Libyans, travel visas to Algerian nationals, and an alleged 14,000 residence permits for Libyans issued through the offices of Joe Sammut.
The latter case is under investigation by police and charges have been filed in court, while other calls for inquiries into Café Premier were dealt with by the National Audit Office.
The PN also said Muscat should hold an inquiry into his chief of staff’s commercial interest in servicing printing machinery that could be supplied to the Crane Currency factory in Malta; and his role in securing the Banif Bank sale to an Qatari conglomerate.
It also said the government should hold an inquiry into the decision by FIAU director Manfred Galdes to leave his public sector job to move to a money laundering unit opened by legal firm Fenech Farrugia Fiott.
The PN is still insisting a MaltaToday story that revealed the discontinued police investigation into CapitalOne, is a “government propaganda” intended at deviating from the arrival of an LNG tanker in Marsaxlokk that will be fuelling the new Delimara gas plant.
“This inquiry is a fascist attack to intimidate the Opposition because the government is not ready to hold inquiries that would uncover the dirt inside its own administration.”