BREAKING/John Dalli’s daughters escape prosecution/investigating officer resigns

Last October John Dalli’s two daughters, Claire Gauci Borda and Louisa Dalli, were set to be charged with complicity in defrauding a number of American pensioners of their life savings and other sums of money. Enough evidence had been found for charges to be issued against the two women, but not against their father, as it was his daughters’ names that were on all documents and correspondence and not his.

But in what has come to be a pattern, the investigating officer – Inspector Jonathan Ferris of the Police Economic Crimes Unit – resigned from the police force soon after charges were meant to be issued. He has now taken up a position with the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit. Mrs Gauci Borda and Ms Dalli have not been charged since.

The Economic Crimes Unit is headed by Ian Abdilla, who accompanied the Commissioner of Police to the PANA Committee hearing in Valletta last week.

The fraud case involves a Maltese company called Tyre Ltd, the stated purpose of which was to deal in gold and invest in gold mines. In reality, it was nothing but a vehicle used by fraudsters posing as Christian missionaries to cheat genuine believers of large sums of money, telling them that it would be invested in mines and other projects which would create employment opportunities for people in impoverished parts of the world.

The scam was run by a certain Marie Eloise Corbin, operating under the false name of Mary Swan and other aliases, including Lady Bird, working out of a flat on Sliema’s High Street along with two accomplices. Inspector Ferris raided the flat two years ago, following which scandal Ms Corbin was evicted by her landlord, Karl German. Her present whereabouts are unknown.

Ms Corbin and her associate were held for interrogation by the police during the raid, and were later returned to the flat by police officers.

A group of American pensioners filed reports with the police in Malta and in the United States more than two years ago, after being warned and threatened by Claire Gauci Borda and others in the scam that they would never see their money if they did so.

They explained to the police – and to this website – how they had been asked to wire their ‘investment’ money to an account held by Corporate Group – not Tyre Ltd – at HSBC Bank Malta’s St Julian’s branch. They never saw or heard of that money again. Corporate Group is John Dalli’s firm but at the time it was managed and fronted by his daughters as he was then a European Commissioner.

A police car parked outside Marie Eloise Corbin’s flat on Sliema’s High Street during the raid in May 2015

Marie Eloise Corbin with John Dalli and his daughter Louisa Dalli in the Bahamas in the summer of 2012. Dalli was a European Commissioner at the time.