Maria Efimova’s Twitter account no longer active

Pilatus Bank whistleblower Maria Efimova has had her Twitter account disabled, less than a month after the Russian national joined the social media platform.

When contacted by MaltaToday, Efimova’s lawyer Alexandros Papastergiopoulous said he had no information on whether anything had prompted Efimova to take down her account.

Efimova was as one of the sources behind allegations made by the Daphne Caruana Galizia in April last year, where she claimed that the Prime Minister’s wife was the ultimate beneficial owner of Egrant Inc., a company revealed by the Panama Papers to have been opened by Nexia BT for an unnamed client.

Caruana Galizia had claimed that Egrant held an account at Pilatus Bank, and had received over $1 million dollars from Al Sahra FZCO, a Dubai-registered company belonging to Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of Azerbaijan president Ilham Aliyev.

The Muscats have denied all the allegations.

Efimova was named as Caruana Galizia’s source shortly after the allegations were published on 20 April 2017, and was eventually discovered to have fled Malta to Greece when she failed to turn up for court proceedings related to the time when she was employed at Pilatus. Her failure to turn up in court led the magistrate to seek a European arrest warrant for the Russian national.

She remained out of the public eye until 14 April this year when she joined Twitter, two days after a Greek court decided that she would not be extradited to Malta.

Efimova had given herself up to the Greek police on the same day in March that Pilatus bank owner Ali Sadr Hasheminejad was arrested in the US and accused of busting sanctions against Iran.

In the period that her account was active, Efimova regularly engaged in debate with civil society activists and politicians, some of whom often retweeted her.

She also used the platform to single out Pilatus Bank employees by name, alleging they were guilty of wrongdoing, and urged them to come clean.

Her stint in the public eye culminated in a video message that she sent to anti-corruption activists and which was played during last week’s Justice and Truth protest held in Valletta.