Government yet to publish CapitalOne inquiry report

No date was set for the publication of an inquiry board’s conclusions into allegations raised in a MaltaToday report in 2016, which claimed that a police investigation on money laundering was not pursued by the Maltese police when Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami’s name cropped up during the investigations.

Three retired judges – Joseph Camilleri, Lawrence Quintano and Philip Sciberras – were entrusted with the inquiry into the police’s handling of the CapitalOne investigation in October 2016.

MaltaToday reported that a January 2013 police investigation that had raised the spectre of money laundering was never pursued by the Maltese police, ostensibly when police found out Fenech Adami was the director of a fiduciary services company handling the affairs of CapitalOne Investment Group.

In a statement issued Tuesday, the government claimed that the investigation directly affected important national institutions and that the report would therefore “be analysed before being eventually published”.

The report revealed that, acting on a Dutch request for assistance in late 2012, Maltese police were looking into the banking transactions of CapitalOne, a company connected to Robert Soogea, a Dutchman whose property was raided by police in a drug bust.

In an investigation carried out jointly by MaltaToday and freelance journalist Mark Hollingsworth, sources privy to the Dutch investigation expressed frustration that not all evidence connected to banking transactions by CapitalOne were passed on to them by the Maltese police.

Both Beppe Fenech Adami and Robert Abdilla Castillo – directors of Baltimore Fiduciary, which acted as the nominee company that ‘owned’ CapitalOne’s shares – denied knowing anything of this investigation, even though an asset freeze was ordered on request of the Dutch police.

At the time, Beppe Fenech Adami was parliamentary assistant for home affairs, handling the portfolio for then prime minister Lawrence Gonzi. He has denied having been spoken to about this case by police at the time.