Jonathan Ferris denies Pilatus presence during Efimova’s interrogation

No Pilatus Bank officials were present during the police’s interrogation of Russian whistle-blower Maria Efimova in 2016, the former police investigator Jonathan Ferris has said.

An interview with Efimova, published by the Greek newspaper Kathimerini last week stated that the former Pilatus Bank employee had filed a police report following her interrogation, in which she claimed she was mistreated by one of the officers who pushed her and took her mobile phone “while two Pilatus Bank executives attended the interrogation”.

“The policemen who interrogated me told me, ‘We are friends of the bank’, and they even pressured me to apologise to the bank executives they had brought to the police station,” she was quoted as saying.

Efimova is currently facing two sets of criminal proceedings in Malta. She has been accused by the bank of defrauding it of roughly €2,000 in one case, and by the police of having made false accusations against Superintendent Denis Theuma, inspector Lara Butters and Ferris, who interrogated her, in another.

She is the subject of two EAWs (European arrest warrant) issued by the Maltese courts after failing to appear for court sittings since she left the island.

Efimova was reported to have fled the country last summer, but she turned herself in to Greek police last month allegedly after receiving a phone-call informing her that her former boss at Pilatus Bank would soon be arrested.

Pilatus chairman Ali Sadr Hasheminejad was arrested on the same day that Efimova turned herself in.

Asked whether he denied claims by Efimova that Pilatus Bank officials were present during her interrogation, lawyers Jason Azzopardi and Andrew Borg Cardona, acting on Ferris’s behalf, said that “to the best of his knowledge, no bank officials were ever present during any interrogation”.

“He always carried out his duties within the parameters of the law,” the lawyers said of the police investigator who later worked for the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit before being sacked after June 2017. Ferris is claiming unfair dismissal and has also petitioned the Maltese government for whistleblower status, but his request has been denied.

Efimova’s claims were also denied by the police in a statement last week.

The Russian national was named last year as one of the sources behind allegations by the late Daphne Caruana Galizia, that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s wife Michelle was the ultimate beneficial owner of the Panamanian company Egrant, and that the company had received a payment of over $1 million from a company belonging to Leyla Aliyev, daughter of Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev.

In the interview with Efimova, it was said that one of the police officers who interrogated her had since left the police force and was willing to go to Greece to testify in her favour.

Questioned on whether in this case Efimova was referring to Ferris and whether he had pledged to testify in her favour, his lawyers said he would testify to the truth.

“This question should be addressed to her rather than to him,” they said. “As far as he is concerned, Jonathan Ferris will never testify in favour or against anyone. If requested by competent authorities and according to law, he will testify to the truth, without fear or favour.”

Ferris’s lawyers were also asked whether Efimova was right to make claims of mistreatment against him and his colleagues.

“Certainly not. Reading the Police Internal affairs report and the Police Board reports will give you a clear and comprehensive answer in this regard. I trust your paper can be given access to these as it had similar access to similar police internal affairs reports in the past,” they said.

On whether the police were right to initiate proceedings against Efimova as a result of the claims, Ferris’s lawyers “reiterated that all reports should be properly and meticulously investigated, irrespective of the parties involved”.

“Contrast this with how the FIAU reports involving Keith Schembri, Adrian Hillman, Brian Tonna and Minister Konrad Mizzi have been ‘handled’.”

Compliance visits at Pilatus Bank by the FIAU in 2016 prompted a request by the then-director Manfred Galdes to the police chief to investigate the bank. But the Commissioner for Police Michael Cassar resigned two weeks later.