Prime Minister’s chief of staff and chairman of Times of Malta/Sunday Times publishers own secret company together in Cyprus

From the report in The Malta Independent on Sunday today:

In a Panama Papers email with the subject ‘Re: Lester-Colson-Selson’, Mr Cini writes to a Mossack Fonseca executive assistant: “As for your information required, please note that all these three companies will be holding companies, they will hold shares in a Cyprus company (to start with), and all bookkeeping and records will be kept at our office.”

Cini here is Karl Cini of Nexia BT. Lester, Colson and Selson are the secret companies in the British Virgin Islands owned by, respectively, Adrian Hillman, Keith Schembri and Malcolm Scerri. Scerri is a fellow shareholder with Keith Schembri in several Malta companies in which they own 50% each. He is also a director of other Malta companies of which Schembri is the sole shareholder.

This is not in The Malta Independent’s report, but it obviously follows from it that this means Adrian Hillman, Keith Schembri and Malcolm Scerri are all fellow shareholders, through their BVI holding companies, of YET ANOTHER secret company, registered in Cyprus.

The email was sent after the Labour Party won the general election in 2013, so what we have here is a headline-making story: that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff and the chairman of the publishing group that owns the Times of Malta and The Sunday Times actually went into unspecified business together and that together they own shares in a company in Cyprus, using holding companies in the British Virgin Islands, with nominee directors and nominee shareholders, to conceal the fact that they are the ultimate beneficial owners of this unnamed Cyprus company.

And Malcolm Scerri, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff’s business associate in Kasco and other companies, is the third UBO of the Cyprus company, also through a BVI holding company.

Adrian Hillman was forced to resign from his post at the Allied Newspaper Group some weeks ago, but at the time these arrangements were made, he was its chairman. So what we are talking about here is not just kickbacks on corrupt purchasing deals for Progress Press and Allied Newspapers, in which Hillman made decisions to buy from Keith Schembri’s business – which ended up the main supplier to Progress Press and then took a cut. This is something far, far more serious and significant: the two are partners in some unspecified operation, and they own a Cyprus company together.

Last Friday I reported on information that is not contained in the Panama Papers, and which I obtained through another source which I then confirmed independently: that Keith Schembri is linked to a Cyprus company called Holdforth Ltd, and that he might even be an owner. This is probably the company in question. Through the same source, I obtained information that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff also owns an offshore company in Gibraltar. This informed was confirmed, through a separate source, as being beyond dispute. There is also evidence of money moving between the Gibraltar company owned by the Prime Minister’s chief of staff and the Cyprus company, Holdforth Ltd.

The Prime Minister’s chief of staff

Adrian Hillman, who was forced to resign from the chairmanship of the Allied Newspaper Group, publishers of the Times of Malta and The Sunday Times