John Dalli: the story is a lot bigger than you think

Wayne and Irene Negrini are American Christians who set up their own church in Mettlach-Wehringen in Germany, which includes a spa hotel. Michael Scholten, who gave John Dalli the medical certificates he used to evade criminal prosecution in the months leading up to the general election, is a doctor at the spa.

This is Debbie Wicker (see my post yesterday, ‘OLAF’s investigation into John Dalli’s secretive trips to the Bahamas’), a key part of an operation used to scam American Christian believers of their life savings, telling them the money is going to be invested in charities.

They never see their money again. The money’s ultimate destination is unknown, but various pieces of evidence point to its initially being channelled through a Malta bank account.

Wicker was in the Bahamas with John Dalli on ‘Christian charity’ related business, travelled with him to Germany and also visited him at his office in Malta. All three places are mentioned in her Facebook post on the Father Heart Ministries page, shown here.

In Germany they stayed at a ‘Christian retreat’ run by a couple of Americans, Wayne and Irene Negrini, in Mettlach-Wehringen in Saarland, on the border with Belgium. The Negrinis have set up their own church and also run a boutique spa hotel and restaurant there, which is called His Place (the His is a reference to Jesus).

John Dalli visited His Place more than once during his stint as EU Commissioner. His Place was also Dalli’s foxhole for part of the time when he stayed away from Malta to evade criminal charges on corruption over the months December 2012/January-February 2013.

The medical certificates he used to avoid returning to Malta to face charges, giving psycho-social problems and unfitness to travel as the reason, were signed by a doctor who is in attendance at His Place hotel spa, Michael Scholten. When I rang His Place to ask to speak to Scholten, I was told that his sessions there are infrequent, and would I please leave my name and number and he would ring me back. When I was asked where I was calling from, and said ‘Malta’, there was a frozen moment. Needless to say, there was no return call.

Debbie Wicker is not to be confused with the dangerous and elusive Mary Swan/Lady Bird/ Eloise Corbin, who uses several forged passports/aliases and a false front of Christian charities – most especially, talking about how charity money is invested in gold mines – to scam believers and ‘investors’ of their money on a grand scale. Mary Swan (her real name is Corbin and she is from South Carolina) was also in the Bahamas for meetings with John Dalli and his daughter Claire Gauci Borda. She used the services of John Dalli & Associates and rented a flat in Sliema’s High Street.