Better than fiction: one of the owners of More Supermarkets is called VICE HOLDINGS
D More Holdings – the holding company which owns More Supermarkets.
Vice Holdings
Vice Holdings – a shareholder in the holding company which owns More Supermarkets
Regent Group – the development company owned by Raymond Camilleri, one of the two shareholders in VICE Holdings
Adrian Zammit, one of two shareholders and directors of VICE Holdings. The other is the real estate developer Raymond Camilleri of Regent Group
Darren Casha of Medasia, now the main shareholder in D More Holdings, which owns More Supermarkets. He has bought out his business associate Ryan Schembri.
Erom Trading Ltd details
Erom Trading Ltd – the vehicle used to buy out Ryan Schembri in June this year
Erom Ltd – the company which, until June this year, held More Supermarkets
Erom Ltd – the company Ryan Schembri set up with Darren Casha to go into the supermarket business only last year
A meeting for creditors of More Supermarkets has been called for this Thursday.
They are among the collateral damage in the ongoing money-laundering/trafficking scandal that burst into public view when Ryan Schembri, first cousin to the prime minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, absconded from Malta leaving a morass of debt now said to total in the region of Eur55 million.
Ryan Schembri was an owner of More Supermarkets along with Darren Casha, Adrian Zammit (his father is Michel Zammit; his grandfather was Eucharistico Zammit – Ta’ Karistu) and the real estate developer Raymond Camilleri, whose Regent Group is headquartered at Villino Chapelle in St Paul’s Bay.
Casha, 32, has over the last two or three years expanded his family’s old-time Gzira guest house, Pebbles, into a mini-empire that includes the flash-trash haunts Medasia in Gzira and Medasia Playa in Sliema, favourite watering-holes of the chairman of the Malta Council of Science and Technology, the President of the Law Commission, a variety of off-duty former Soviet bloc strippers, lap-dancers, hookers and fortune-hunters, the very worst sort of Maltese hamalli tal-flus and other ‘positive’ types of the sort championed by the Taghna Lkoll Movement, all trying very hard to look as though they’re featuring in a Roberto Cavalli Eurotrash-meets-Beirut-via-Tashkent advertisement.
A little over a year ago, Darren Casha moved into the supermarket business with Ryan Schembri, setting up the holding company Erom Ltd in August last year. The shareholders in Erom Ltd were Ryan Schembri personally and D More Holdings Ltd, which latter is owned by Darren Casha and VICE Holdings Ltd.
VICE Holdings is owned by Adrian Zammit and Raymond Camilleri.
When financial problems began to escalate earlier this year, Casha bought Schembri out. The holding company for More Supermarkets is now Erom Trading Ltd and the shareholders are Darren Casha personally (in place of Ryan Schembri) and D More Holdings in which Casha – as before – remains a shareholder along with VICE.
This supermarket business came out of nowhere around two years ago, opening its first More-branded outfit at Daniel’s Shopping Complex in Hamrun, then buying existing supermarket operations in Fgura, Haz-Zebbug, Mosta and Axis in Paceville, and rebranding them under the More name.
One supplier to supermarkets told me: “Anything he (Ryan Schembri) could get his hands on, he was taking. They began falling behind on their payments last spring, and then stopped paying altogether. Then Schembri disappeared for a month round about July. When he returned to Malta, we heard that he had been in trouble with the police in Croatia. I believe he actually told us as much, seeing it as a justifiable excuse for not meeting his obligations.”
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I have to say this: and the other lot busy themselves with policy fora.
Clean up the bloody country first. You cannot build policy on a bed of filth.
Well said. It’s coming down.
“Cobwebs hanging over cesspits” don’t need good policy – they need good police.
Fear not, chaps. The police are doing their duty. All manner of dark and dangerous cavities have been investigated thoroughly already.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141013/local/policeman-cleared-of-groping-foreign-woman-guilty-of-resisting-arrest.539600
Not good for Malta to have good police. Good for Malta to have politicians mixing with these people, good business with money flowing here and there..
What a mess.
This exercise should have been carried out by the persons responsible for setting up those companies in the first place. That’s why the FIAU insists that professionals dealing in financial services background-check their clients before accepting to assist them in any way, but no one takes this seriously.
All this is dirty, stinking trash with more than meets the eye behind it. It is Mafia-style business, the likes of which hit the news every so often in Sicily where Mafia properties are broadcast as having been seized by Police and utilised for humanitarian purposes by the government.
Medasia is also building an office complex opposite Places club in Paceville.
This included demolishing two night clubs, including the newly opened Mona Lisa, where a very substantial investment had been made by the previous owners. Everyone was baffled by this.
Interesting.
Muscat could make one of his personal appearances at the opening, just like he did at Daniel’s Complex in Hamrun.
All these people should be seriously investigated by the police.
But then we had the ex police commissioner Zammit stating that there was no case in John Dalli’s affair.
If you already know that the police are compromised, even leaving out the fact that the acts related to this scandal may not even be reported to the police in their entirety due to their law-evading nature, where does real white-collar crime get reported?
It’s seriously hampering and totally unjust.
We are not talking of confirmed circumstantial issues like the Dalli case, these are hard facts, hard money issues which can be traced and located if need be.
But there is no freedom to act for the Police Force, since the removal of Pietru Pawl Zammit the incumbent is simply stringing along to hopefully have his official position confirmed as Commissioner.
Re Malta Sicily connector: Muscat is quoted by Times of Malta: “Sicily most often did not have enough electricity for itself and would not guarantee that it would give Malta the electricity it needed when it needed it.”
This is blatant misinformation.
Malta is not buying electricity from Sicily but from the European grid, most obviously supplied by France, as Italy does for its own requirements. Italy does not suffer lack of electricity supply, but possibly Sicily may on occasion have some localised problems due to weak distribution.
Can you imagine a €300 million euro investment, mostly funded (and approved) by the EU, and then Malta cannot derive the electricity from it when it needs to? That would have been a scandal of Dalli proportions, and the PL in Opposition would have been screaming about it. But this a completely false allegation, and PL has always agreed with the interconnector project.
The only threat is that should a major fault occur with the cable, Malta’s electricity supply would be compromised as there would not be sufficient redundancy supply in Malta to compensate. Indeed the longer term was to have a second interconnector to the European grid.
The new power station being built is totally unnecessary – but expert debate, which is what should have dominated the issue, was completely lost as it was overshadowed by the EneMalta/Tancred Tabone alleged bribery scandal.
The PN issued a statement and did not even raise this issue and expose the false allegation. Superficiality at its worst.
This is why I have given up on the Opposition. It’s not a question of empathy or of Dr Busuttil needing more time settling in. There is simply is no depth, and I am seriously concerned about its ability as an alternative government.
You can expect a lot more unfounded allegations and spin from the government in the coming months to cover up the new power station debacle. This issue could turn out to be a game-changer for the PN, but going by the very weak press release of yesterday, this is unlikely.
Yes, saw that, so the liar panics, and when he does, ridiculous.
It also implies he’s fully aware of the interconnector argument holding solid ground whereas his super plant is just a floating mess.
Off he goes then, fibs and snide attempts to discredit what isn’t his.
Agreed about the PN, they still need to learn what is acceptable and what isn’t, before the whole country’s mired in Muscat’s amoral goo.
A prime minister who can’t hold an argument thus resorts to barefaced lying is simply one to condemn in no uncertain terms.
Freedom5, join us. I need you in my team.
Anyone operating a basic ‘long firm’ will probably get businessman of the year.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130203/interview/Contractors-are-too-close-to-Labour-Farrugia.455934
Dear Daphne,
You are an inspiration to anyone who treasures freedom of expression and real democracy. Thank you.
On a side note if I am not mistaken Darren Casha is also involved in an upcoming mega diner in Smart City.
Have you ever wondered why the glitzy restaurants which have sprouted all over the island recently are all just about looks and looking trendy, but the food and service are rubbish?
They all look equally brash and at times, the staff have a real problematic attitude. They are uncomfortable serving customers and the whole set up gives me the impression of a front for something else, that after hours, the same waiters trade their uniforms to those of bodyguards.
The same goes for all the ‘Sicilian restaurants’ of late. I thought Italians had a passion for food but at the ones I’ve been too, the food tastes as bad as school canteen left-overs.
These are the sort of businessmen who continuously call for the removal of bureaucracy, so that they can do even more of what they like.
And when I went to withdraw a modest amount of cash to pay for my poor mother’s stay in a private home I got the “we have to know what it’s for on account of money laundering” bull from the “manager”. These holier than thou local banks are so slimy. Not to mention that non-Authority, the MFSA.
About 2 years ago, during the Libya crisis, I remember someone interviewing Ryan Schembri at a studio at TVM.
He was hailed as a hero. We were told that he has a chain of supermarkets in Libya but due to the crisis, he had to shut most down. Schembri said that he decided to be patriotic and bring jobs to his country as well as helping with Malta’s economy by opening a shopping mall and a supermarket.
This was about 6 months prior to the scheduled opening date.
I had wondered at the time who this man was, appearing out of the blue and having several supermarkets to his name at such a young age. Quite suspicious. And coming in from Libya too, when half of the Gaddafi clan were fleeing for their lives.
As for the patriotic part, what utter tosh. He had to wait for most of Libya to be in ruins before he decided to ‘help out’ with Malta’s economy.
Unpaid Enemalta bills lead to temporary closure of More Supermarket
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141014/local/unpaid-enemalta-bills-lead-to-temporary-closure-of-more-supermarket.539710
I wonder how many people are remembering the ‘Day to Day’ and ‘Price Club’ saga and wondering how the auditors and banks will come out smelling this time.
Daphne,
that ‘old-time Gzira guest house, Pebbles’ is actually that old-time Sliema guest house, Pebbles’.
That’s why the MFSA company details show Darren Casha’s address in Sliema.
Surely you knew that?
[Daphne – Pebbles Guest House is in Sliema in the same way that East Ham is in London. For people like me, who grew up near the Preluna Hotel, Sliema ended at the bottom of Prince of Wales Road, where the Gzira Strand began. The nature of Sliema is a highly specialised subject, fraught with minefields for the uninitiated. Don’t go there.]