UPDATED/Henry Mifsud had been made to resign from Bank of Valletta for pilfering boxes full of the bank’s whisky

Henry Mifsud, appointed by Tourism Minister Edward Zammit Lewis to the top job at the Institute of Tourism Studies, where he is currently engaged in embarrassing himself and Zammit Lewis

I have received the following letter in the mail.

Dear Daphne,

I write about Henry Mifsud of the Institute of Tourism Studies, who you wrote about in your blog. There are facts about him of which you are probably not aware.

I worked at the National Bank of Malta, later Bank of Valletta, for over 40 years, and I know Henry quite well having worked directly with him for a while. You can confirm the facts that I am writing about with a number of people who work at Bank of Valletta or used to do so.

Joe Tabone, when he was the bank’s chairman, had demanded – and obtained – Henry Mifsud’s resignation. If memory serves me right (I am over 70 now) Hubert Caruana was personnel manager at the time.

As you correctly wrote in one of your posts about the subject, Henry was assigned duties in Australia when Bank of Valletta opened an office there. He was summoned back to Malta after a mess he made that cost Bank of Valletta hundreds of thousands of Australian dollars.

He wasn’t sacked, but was instead assigned duties at the bank’s head office in Zachary Street, Valletta, which included the organization of social functions.

On one occasion, after the reception was over, Henry called in person at the hotel where it was held, saying that he had come to collect the bottles of spirits that were left over. These had been provided directly by the bank and belonged to it; the hotel was not invoicing per bottle used.

A few days later, personnel from Bank of Valletta called at the hotel to collect those bottles of spirits, only to be told that Mr Mifsud had already collected them. It later transpired that Mr Mifsud had transferred the goods straight to his home. His explanation was that he wanted to make sure they were kept safe.

The matter ended up on the chairman’s desk. The chairman, Mr Tabone, apparently told Henry that he had got away scot free on the Australia debacle which cost the bank a huge sum of money, but this time round he had to resign or be fired and face the law for theft. Henry had no alternative but to resign.

Regards,

————–

UPDATE/I have received the following email from somebody who read this post.

The Australia connection is even more interesting. Some time before 1992 Henry Mifsud was accused by a Bank of Valletta client in Australia who said that he had given him money or cheques to be deposited in his account (the client’s account, that is) but that this money was not deposited according to instructions and instead “disappeared”.

Mifsud always denied these allegations, which may be why he wasn’t fired on the spot. But Joe Tabone, who was chairman at the time, recalled him to Malta as the bank risked losing its licence there because of this.

The Australian police wanted to interview Mifsud about these allegations. I have no idea whether they did so or not, but I don’t think he was able to return to Australia anyway.