Lino Spiteri can’t lie to make himself feel better, because there are witnesses who are still alive
I wrote on this website a few days ago, in response to Lino Spiteri, that he was wrong to assert that National Bank of Malta shareholders were not threatened into signing over their shares to the state.
I pointed out that people do not sign away valuable shares for nothing, still less those particular people for the sheer love of Dom Mintoff.
I described how my grandfather, Louis Vella, who was literally in the eye of the storm as chairman of the bank’s board of directors when Mintoff launched his assault, was threatened. I gave only the barest outline because the details are a good deal worse and quite frankly, nobody else’s business.
And I said that I would not speak for others, all of whom have their own story, because they are perfectly able to speak for themselves and if they do not it’s because they can’t bear to do so or because they believe it futile. Or they are dead.
The only shareholders who were not threatened were those who had no Achilles’ heel, or none that Mintoff could find. Mintoff didn’t threaten them because he had nothing to threaten them with. The prime minister cannot behave like a Mafia boss and say ‘remember you have children’ or ‘we’ll break your legs’ or ‘you’ll be found hanging from a bridge’.
There were times when he allowed his men to do this and pretended not to know, but that’s another story. Or stories.
The Times today carries two letters which I reproduce below. One is by Peter Dacoutros, who is known to the Labour Party’s television audience in very different circumstances to these. The other is by Marie Attard Montalto nee Sant Fournier, whose family were significant shareholders in the bank and whose late husband Philip was a director when Mintoff attacked.
I’m glad Mrs Attard Montalto mentioned the fact that our telephones were all tapped, because I seemed to be the only one mentioning this. It effectively broke off proper and efficient communication between the bank’s directors, their families and large shareholders because nobody used the phone and all conversations had to take place face to face.
This was particularly problematic because the telephone couldn’t be used to arrange those meetings in the first place. I remember not even being allowed to use the telephone to call my friends.
As for the involvement of the police in Mintoff’s strategy, I find it almost fascinating, in retrospect, that he had been in power for just two years and already he had made the police force into his instrument of abuse and oppression.
What these two letters illustrate most poignantly is the breakdown of law and order. Those who did not grow up in a country where crimes couldn’t be reported to the police because it was the police who were committing them, in a country where the separation of powers and systems designed to protect people from state abuse had broken down in just a few months, will never be able to understand how completely vulnerable and helpless we were in the face of such an assault.
You couldn’t call Mintoff’s bluff, the police’s bluff, because you knew for a fact that they weren’t bluffing. They meant it. Oh, and they always came at night, when the law expressly forbids this.
——–
Saturday, May 5, 2012 – Letters to the Editor
Peter Dacoutros, Sliema
Black night in bank history (1)
I refer to the article National Bank Group Saga featured in The Times Business Supplement of April 26 and to various other articles regarding the same matter appearing in The Times. I would like to state the true facts which concerned our family on that fateful December night of 1973 when my uncle, Peter Dacoutros, was forced to sign off his shares in the National Bank of Malta.
Two policemen in uniform turned up at the door of my uncle’s residence in East Street, Valletta, and rang the doorbell at 10.40 p.m. My uncle went downstairs in his pyjamas and opened the door accompanied by his two terrified spinster sisters who lived with him. The three of them were in their late 70s at the time.
One of the two policemen handed a document to my uncle and requested him to sign it. My uncle asked what the paper was all about and in return the policeman told him it was a document whereby he would be signing off his shares in the National Bank of Malta. My uncle had a quick look at the document and then told the policemen that as his brother, who happened to be my father, was a lawyer, he would consult with him immediately and the following morning he would go to the bank’s head office and see to the matter.
One of the policemen told my uncle: “Jekk inti ma’tiffirmax dik il-karta issa, għada filgħodu ma jkollokx għalfejn tmur il-fabbrika għaliex ma tkunx tiegħek iżjed.” (If you do not sign that document now, tomorrow morning you will have no reason to go to the factory as it will not be yours anymore).
My uncle Peter signed the document. Yes, signed under duress or as we commonly say, at gunpoint!
Nobody in his right frame of mind would sign off his wealth unless he was forced to do so. I was a 22 year old man at the time. These facts are as clear in my mind as they were on the night it happened. Yes, because these facts are the undeniable truth. These facts I recounted in court when I was asked to give testimony on October 28, 2010.
A distortion of these facts by anybody directly or indirectly involved in engineering the takeover of The National Bank of Malta would be acting like the proverbial “throwing the stone and then hiding his hand”. It would be a devious mind acting out of shame and guilt for one’s wrongdoing. Where there is guilt there is crime.
Yes, the takeover of The National Bank of Malta was a heinous crime, an ongoing cancerous tumour in the banking system of our Malta.
——-
Saturday, May 5, 2012 – Letters to the Editor
Marie Attard Montalto, Rabat
Black night in bank history (2)
I refer to Lino Spiteri’s article National Bank Of Malta Saga in The Times’ Business (April 26).
Mr Spiteri is correct in saying that surviving shareholders are irked by the fact that 38 years after the event the court cases have not yet been concluded. However, his declaration that the only “individuals who went to plead with shareholders to hand over their shares to the government were members of the bank employees’ union, hugely concerned about their job” is incorrect.
“Bully boy” tactics also took the form of psychological bullying. The “bully boys” who “banged on my door” took the form of policemen who woke up my whole family in the dead of night with the heavy-handed ringing of our doorbell.
They said they wanted to search the house but after telling my late husband and I to ensure that we signed over our personal and family company shares in the National Bank Group as demanded by Dom Mintoff, they left without a search. The threatening words “or else” were left unspoken, but we got the message!
I also recall that during those terrible days which left a scar on Malta’s banking history, our telephone calls were being monitored. Yes, we definitely felt threatened by Mr Mintoff’s direct and veiled threats. Who in their right mind would have signed over their shares without compensation unless they felt threatened by moral violence and possibly also physical violence?
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120505/letters/Black-night-in-bank-history-2-.418387
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120505/letters/Black-night-in-bank-history-1-.418386
Has anyone told Yana about these letters?
The elves are speechless, or have they got writer’s cramp?
It’s all second-hand hearsay because Anthony Pavia says so.
Shame on Lino Spiteri for trying to rewrite recent history during teh life time of the victims or their relatives.
Is this Joseph’s New Labour?
In the meantime, I’m busy trying to dig up from the attic a book called “”Nothing but the truth” published before 1987 recalling the role the police force had during the Mintoff regime in repressing the Maltese.
I got the urge to re-read it after reading your article.
And just this week Lino Spiteri on a radio programme hosted by Charles Xuereb on Campus FM complained that Maltese history is not taught properly to our children. And he’s the one who wants to rewrite history.
Do Karmenu Vella, AST, Spiteri, Debono Grech, Laiviera, Grima and the rest of the Mintoffian-era fossils qualify for the title of ”Tele-prompters”?
Do you notice that Eddy Privitera, who jumps at every occasion to write to The Times, has not put pen and paper on this subject.
Shame Lino Spiteri. Apologise or be damned!
The film will once again be the topic of discussion in next week’s Xarabank. Can’t wait to see what Yana Mintoff will come out with.
Let’s hope someone will take her all the facts.
Like the producers, perhaps?
Try as you will Lino, but you’ll never fool any of us.
You are what you are and no amount of squirmy writing will change that. A leopard never changes its spots and you’re the living proof of that.
There must be a reason why Lino Spiteri is writing such blatant untruths. It can only be that he himself has much to hide.
My grandfather possessed a few shares which he didn’t sign off for the simple reason that they were insignificant in amount and that he was abroad at the time. Years later, he told me that this shameful episode was one of Malta s greatest thefts.
Perhaps Lino Spiteri may care to shed light on an as yet undisclosed fact.
Why has he been appointed, year after year, to represent the ex-Libyan regime’s interest in the companies that have joint Maltese /Libyan Government shareholding? Medavia for instance?
Lino Spiteri is cut from the same cloth as Mintoff. No use hiding it and the passage of time has not changed him from being a Mintuffjan to the core. His credibility is zero, like KMB’s, Sant’s and Joseph’s all put together.
It is people like these who make me believe in hell, because for sure, what else would await them when they kick the bucket? A ‘golden’ eternity? That would be the greatest injustice of all.
If this was a “heinous crime”, why weren’t steps taken to address it and bring the perpetrators to justice after the MLP was booted out of power in 1987?
Is it because Court proceedings are still in progress – almost 40 years after the events took place? Something’s wrong somewhere.
There was another book called, if I remember correctly, ‘Is Malta burning?’
Must look it up as well as I have not seen it in a while.
We were brought up in a culture of violence propagated by the Mintoff and KMB govts. My mum went out to fetch supplies from the grocer and found a dead rabbit hanging on ur door knocker.
Our crime? My mum was a PN street leader and my brother a member of the PN local youth council.
And they say we were not threatened?
We still feel threatened just by hearing them open their mouths or trying to excuse their past crimes.
No wonder Joseph wanted to get rid of all the old symbols, torca etc.
But they are still the same, lurking ready to pounce. The irony is that some people have a short memory and are ready to risk their future because of some silly irritation.
Mela nistghu nghidu li Lino Spiteri giddieb ? Jew nofs giddieb.
Jew ma jafx x’qed jghid ghax ghajnejh biss fil-poter? Jista xi hadd l-abjad jghidlu abjad, forsi nifmhu din il-pudina kif inhadmet u min kien responsabli u mdeffes.
The lack of comments on these letters from the usual contributors (I’m confused, is it elfs, or elves??) is rather telling.
My general feeling towards Lino Spiteri – a very intelligent and rational man – is one of huge disappointment.
[Daphne – They’re not going to attack Peter Dacoutros because he’s a Super One star. So right now, they’re confused. You might have failed to notice – I certainly didn’t – that Dacoutros didn’t mention Lino Spiteri as the author of the piece.]
I did indeed – diplomacy? Looking after No. 1, by saying his piece without biting the hand that feeds him, and confusing his Super One fan-base in the meantime?
There might be hope yet. Astrid has commented in Peter’s support. The only negative comment posted is by someone who is clearly an idiot.
The PN governments had an obligation to seek justice as the bank shareholders were robbed by the MLP government.
Their plight will not go away, justice must be served.
As I saw the name Peter Dacoutros I was shocked. How could a person who went through something like that want any kind of relationship with the Labour Party, its people and its television station.
Yes, probably he won’t be kicked out of Super One cause the production house he works for is pouring money into the station. He’s charismatic and the people love him so they have to accept him.
So whether Dacoutrous or Vella or Attard Montalto or Bianchi these people (and there are many more) all say that they were threatened to sign over their shares to the government for no compensation.
What we must not forget however is that parliament enacted XLV 1973 before getting the perquisite 65% signatures from the shareholders so whether they signed or not the board had already been removed and the company was already suspended with Lino Spiteri appointed to take charge of all the company assets.
This is very important as it shows that whether people signed under duress or not the original act to remove the board of directors was illegal as it went against the constitution.
Everything that emanated from that Act is therefore unlawful and the Bank of Valletta is holding property that they have no title to hold.
Its not about Labour or Nationalist because we know they are both involved. It’s about Malta and the rule of law that MUST apply to all Maltese people.
The fact that people were coerced into signing shows the abusive behavior of government that acted institutionally when passing XLV 1973 and how this permeated down to the individual when pressure on them was made as witnessed above.
We must not allow this to go on. We are only free if our freedom goes all the way to the rule of law. If it stops at a despot acting in the National interest or otherwise then we are free no more.