CapitalOne’s €5.3 million deposits were police’s smoking gun in money laundering investigation

Over €5.3 million in deposits were made over four years into the Capitalone Investment Group bank account, from mainly Cypriot and Greek companies, that were later disbursed into other Cypriot companies.

The Bank of Valletta transactions were effected following faxed instructions from Baltimore Fiduciary Services’ director Richard Abdilla Castillo.

One of the bank documents passed on to the police by BOV

The transactions were handed over by Bank of Valletta when it was notified on 28 December 2012 that the Maltese police was pursuing “an ongoing money laundering investigation”.

In its request the police requested a survey of all transactions on the accounts of CapitalOne Investment Group, which in turn revealed the slew of deposits, withdrawals and faxed banking instructions from Richard Abdilla Castillo, one of the co-directors of Baltimore Fiduciary Services.

Baltimore Fiduciary was then the owner of CapitalOne’s entire shareholding, acting as a nominee company to hide CapitalOne’s ultimate beneficial owner.

Dutch police had alerted the Maltese of suspicions of alleged drug trafficking when it arrested Robert Soogea and Henrique Cumberbatch in November 2012, requesting a freeze on his Malta holdings. These included his interests in CapitalOne Investment Group.

While MaltaToday cannot suggest any irregularity from the transactions, these payments are the smoking gun that led police investigators to request guidance on the investigation, and to forward the information to the Dutch public prosecutor seeking information on the holdings of Robert Soogea.

Bank of Valletta also revealed it had issued credit cards in the name of ‘CapitalOne Investment Group / Robert Soogea’, and other associates like Ioannis Moustos, confirming the link between the man arrested in the Netherlands and CapitalOne in Malta.

The cash that flowed into CapitalOne was also used to pay off Soogea’s credit cards, and finally in 2016, Baltimore sold off CapitalOne’s entire shareholding to Ioannis Moustos.

• In February 2009, the company gave notice that it was raising authorised share capital from €50,000 to €200 million.
• In August 2009, it received €489,000 from a Greek associate that was later paid out a week later to acquire €490,000 in the Greek firm Asbavel.
• In November and December 2009, it received €1 million in deposits from the firm Logistics SA in five payments. Over December 2009, €200,000 was paid out to acquire 70% of a tourism company GATS, and thereafter another €250,000 to increase its share capital.
• In January 2010, it received €1 million in deposit from a fur coats merchant, Agar Srl, in Poggibonsi, Italy, which the next day was deposited into a Valletta Fund Management account.
• Over the course of 2010, €2.3 million was used to increase share capital in GATS, which was later absorbed by another Greek company.
• Payments of €610,000 also came to CapitalOne from Gillesa Shipping, a firm which Dutch police said also belonged to Robert Soogea; and €1 million from MNS Commercial Brokers of Dubai. 

During all this time, the Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami was a director of Baltimore Fiduciary Services up until January 2014, a month after the police file was marked ‘PU’ – put away. As MaltaToday has written before, Fenech Adami’s signature does not appear in any of the faxed instructions to Bank of Valletta on CapitalOne’s behalf.

When police presented its report to their superiors, investigators pointed out that Soogea was suspected in the illicit trafficking of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances, and laundering of the proceeds of crime.

They also made note in their conclusions that one of the Baltimore Fiduciary directors was a PEP – politically exposed person – and said the information should be forwarded to the Europol office.