Nexia BT’s lawyer says: “HSBC may have used the wrong stationery”

You can’t make these people up. Nexia BT’s lawyer, who is also Konrad Mizzi’s lawyer in his case against me – Aron Mifsud Mifsud Bonnici – wrote to The Malta Independent this morning to suggest that HSBC Bank “may have used incorrect stationery” and that’s why the information reports for Keith Schembri and his managing director, Malcolm Scerri, seem to be forged.

The information reports in question are dated May 2013 and are clearly marked as issued by the bank’s Attard branch, which had closed in February the previous year. Also, in May 2013, HSBC had already stopped issuing information reports through branches and had centralised them at its main office.

In fact, an information report for Adrian Hillman, issued just a month after the other two for the same purpose of being dispatched to Mossack Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands to increase secrecy in his company there, is issued through the main office in Qormi.

Brian Tonna’s lawyer took The Malta Independent to task, unbelievably, for not considering the possibility that HSBC got its stationery confused. Because as anybody who has dealt with HSBC will know, it’s exactly the kind of outfit which, when asked to issue information reports for politically exposed persons like a prime minister’s main man and his managing director, will go to the Big Dark Stationery Cupboard Of The Past, where stationery from long-defunct branches is preserved for posterity, and pick two sheets randomly from there, ignoring the automated process which they use for everything else.

“The fact that the bank may have used incorrect stationery could legitimately have been questioned, but to infer from that, as you have done, that the documents were fraudulently fabricated is very clearly libellous and particularly harmful to my clients, given that they are professionals, for whom reputation is paramount,” Brian Tonna’s lawyer wrote.

It’s a fine time to start worrying about damage to your reputation, Mr Tonna, sitting at your corrupt desk in the Prime Minister’s Office, busy opening secret companies in Panama and the British Virgin Islands for PEPs and their henchmen – oh, and for yourself, too, to allow you to make invoices from your secret company tax deductible by your company in Malta, as you’re busy selling Maltese passports from your throne of conflict of interest and corruption.