Former companion cleared of defaming and insulting Central Bank deputy governor

Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech this morning found Anna Zelbst not guilty of defaming Alfred Mifsud, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Malta, and of using a mobile telephone to insult and threaten him.

Mrs Zelbst lived with Mifsud for more than two decades and is the mother of his two youngest children, who are both adults. They became estranged last year after the bank’s deputy governor sent a message to her that he had intended for his secret mistress. Mrs Zelbst was sitting across a restaurant table from him at the time.

The Central Bank’s deputy governor then reported Mrs Zelbst to the police and had her prosecuted for slapping him, “scratching” him and insulting him. That case is still ongoing.

After she revealed to this website that he had taken considerable bribes from a businessman when he was chairman of Mid Med Bank (the bank was later sold to HSBC) for a banking software contract, he reported her to the police again and had her prosecuted for defaming him and for sending him “threatening” and “insulting” messages over the phone.

Mrs Zelbst was cleared of those charges this morning, and the magistrate gave the Central Bank’s deputy governor a stiff talking-to. The notorious misogynist, Pawlu Lia, is legal counsel to the deputy governor. He was not pleased at all at the outcome.

In the separate prosecution, which is being heard by Anglu Farrugia’s daughter in a clear conflict of political interest which raises fair trial issues, and which has not been concluded yet, Mrs Zelbst was asked to explain why she had called the Central Bank’s deputy governor a “cheat, liar and a thief”. She did so under oath.

Lia then goaded his client to speak up about what he, Lia, clearly considered to be a really grave insult to a man. “Ghid lill-Qorti dik li qaltlek tal-Inter.” The Central Bank’s deputy governor, on the witness stand, said reluctantly: “Iva, qalti ‘Grande Inter’.”

These are the men who are now running our country.

Alfred Mifsud, deputy governor of the Central Bank of Malta