Looks like US banks were not impressed by Muscat’s New York visit

The Prime Minister lead a delegation to New York a few days ago, made up of his Finance Minister, the Malta Financial Services Authority chief and the Central Bank’s deputy governor, in a last-ditch attempt at persuading US banks not to carry on severing their relationship with banks in Malta.

In the last few months alone, JP Morgan and Wells Fargo stopped doing business with the Bank of Valletta as its correspondent banks in the US, leaving it dependent on just one bank for transactions in US dollars.

It looks like US banks were unimpressed by the Maltese delegation’s powers of persuasion, because yesterday Sata Bank announced that it is no longer able to transact in US dollars. This means one thing only: that it has lost the last of whichever US correspondent banks it had since it was set up earlier this year.

But that was bound to happen – there are many who say that Sata Bank should never have been licensed to operate, and that the only reason it obtained clearance was strong rumoured links to the sleaziest operator in the Panama Triad.