PILATUS BANK – in swoop Malta’s carrion vultures and pigs as they continue trying to damage Malta an
If there is anything that symbolises best the current rock-bottom status of the Nationalist Party it is the recent developments regarding Pilatus Bank and the US announcement yesterday that’s its Chairman Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad has been placed under arrest and charged with having violated and breached US sanctions against his home country Iran.
I will repeat that again, his accusations are that through various banks in Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and the Virgin Islands he breached US sanctions against his home country Iran by spiriting vast amounts of money into the US and then to Venezuela to build thousands of homes for people.
Of course, this in the USA is a criminal offence and a case that goes before the Federal Court and the United States acted within its rights.
However, characteristically, the Nationalist Party has swooped on the occasion to continue trying to damage their home country Malta and the Maltese economy. Like a flock of vultures swooping on carrion or a herd of pigs suddenly discovering a slush-full of dead meat, they have plunged into the trough of carrion with glee to fully illustrate the depths to which they will plunge in their thirst to seize back the reins of administrative power.
This, notwithstanding that:
Pilatus Bank first applied to set up their branch in Malta under a Nationalist Administration when Tonio Fenech was Minister for Finance;
That the authority was exactly the self-same one appointed by a Nationalist Government to vet the Pilatus application for a banking licence and APPROVING the bank be given a licence, by which time the Government changed hands and the PN had been kicked out of Government. However, the Board was that appointed by the PN.
As the rapacious greed of this PN clique has no limits and no bounds, they are naturally trying to pin the US development to Malta with absurd allegations against Prime Minister Muscat and Minister for Finance Scicluna to try and regurgitate the vomit that saw Simon Busuttil making an ass of himself by showing pictures of “clandestine baggage” leaving Pilatus Bank at night and also trundling into Court with empty box files.
Rather than rallying around their national Government to ensure that the US development has no reflection on Malta, they are somehow trying to create the impression that Malta is heavily involved and is in fact responsible for the sanctions busting.
Just as well to point out that Pilatus ALSO has a licence to operate in the London financial and banking market and also in the United States itself.
As with all good Governments, our Government has taken the immediate necessary steps in the light of this development and the Malta Police has offered the FBI its assistance if this will throw any light on the alleged sanctions breaching.
Regardless of all this I expect the PN vultures and pigs to continue picking around the carrion bones and the slush in the pig sty they are trying to create.
ALBERT JEROME FENECH
