[WATCH] Scicluna must resign over FIAU shortcomings, Adrian Delia insists

Opposition leader Adrian Delia has demanded that the Maltese government takes responsibility for a scathing report by the European Banking Authority on the FIAU’s monitoring of the shuttered Pilatus bank.

Delia told journalists that finance minister Edward Scicluna has refused to resign as finance minister responsible for the financial intelligence analysis unit, and instead accuse Brussels of pressuring the EBA at the behest of partisan interests, namely from Nationalist MEPs.

The FIAU got itself in breach of the third anti-money laundering directive for not following the correct procedures in its compliance exercise for the private bank Pilatus, whose chairman Ali Sadr Hasheminejad was arrested in the United States in March.

“There is no route left for Scicluna but to resign. He is compromising the jobs of thousands of financial services workers, and risking that this very sector created by the Maltese falls apart,” Delia charged.

Delia insisted that Scicluna had to assume political responsibility, and that if Scicluna does not resign the Prime Minister would have to assume responsibility for the minister’s refusal to step down.

Delia said any administrative resignations – replying to MaltaToday’s question as to whether the FIAU’s supervisory council, chaired by the Attorney General, should resign – should only take place after the appropriate investigations.

“In our country nobody takes any form of political responsibility. The government justifies everything and ironically manages to hide behind the veil of justice in a bid to evade any responsibility,” Delia said.

Delia defended his MP, Mario de Marco, for having called for Scicluna’s head while having also been the defence counsel for a remote gaming firm associated with the Italian criminal organisation ‘Ndrangheta. “What a lawyer does in connection with his professional duties has got nothing to do with a report about the systemic shortcomings of the FIAU on Scicluna’s watch,” Delia said.