BREAKING: Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit chief resigns following police inaction on his unit’s investigation into Prime Minister’s chief of staff and Minister Konrad Mizzi

Manfred Galdes, who for the last several years has led the the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, has resigned.

The Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit is the government agency responsible for the collection, collation, processing, analysis and dissemination of information in the fight against money-laundering and terrorism funding. It is constituted under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in Maltese law, and is responsible, too, for monitoring compliance under anti-money-laundering laws.

Under Mr Galdes, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit had closely investigated the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and the Energy and Health Minister, Konrad Mizzi, and other figures associated with them in their secret offshore dealings in the British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar, Cyprus and Panama, and bank accounts in other jurisdictions.

The FIAU is empowered under Maltese law, European Union law and international treaties to ask for information from banks and state authorities in foreign jurisdictions and to receive it.

The Finance Minister, Edward Scicluna, had confirmed in parliament some months ago – during the Panama Papers debate – that the FIAU was investigating.

Sources at the Police Headquarters informed me last April that the FIAU chief had scheduled a meeting with the Police Commissioner, Michael Cassar, at which he had formally presented him with files of documents and the results of the FIAU investigation into the illicit activities of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff and the Energy/Health Minister, for prosecution.

The Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit is an investigatory body which has no prosecution powers and is chaired by the Attorney General, who is in a conflicting position in his role as legal counsel to the government.

The FIAU is designed to work in tandem with the police: it investigates, and the police prosecute.

The same police sources inform me that just two days after he received the files containing the results of the FIAU investigation into Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and their associates, the Police Commissioner took holiday leave and some days later formally presented his resignation “on health grounds”. The real reason, those police sources say, is that Mr Cassar did not want to deal with the police investigation and prosecution of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, the Energy and Health Minister and their associates, but having been formally requested to do so by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, he was in a quandary which he ‘solved’ by resigning from the post he had held for just 18 months.

Cassar was then replaced by ‘acting’ Police Commissioner Lawrence Cutajar, a personal admirer of Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, whose Facebook page reveals his inability to conduct an investigation/prosecution of that nature even if he had the inclination, which he does not, given his political pronouncements in favour of the Prime Minister and the government/Labour Party.

Cutajar has now been confirmed in his appointment, so the chances that the police will do their duty in acting on the investigation results presented to them by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit recede even further. At this point, it is safe to assume that there is a very high risk of the FIAU investigation report into the Prime Minister’s chief of staff and Minister Konrad Mizzi, that is in the possession of the Police Commissioner, being destroyed or otherwise disposed of.

Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi in Bumi Armada hard hats in Singapore yesterday. The client for the Bumi Armada tanker is Electrogas Malta Ltd and not the government, but the Maltese owners of Electrogas were nowhere to be seen.