No, the whistleblower did NOT commit fraud. Pilatus Bank filed a false report against her when she reported them to the police

Later on today this website will publish a first-person account of the whistleblower’s experiences at Pilatus Bank and how things came to this point.

In the meantime, it’s imperative that one aspect is cleared up immediately because of all the false information and character assassination being put about by aides to the Prime Minister, the Labour Party media and its friendly journalists in the independent newspapers.

These are the bare facts – the full story will be uploaded later.

Mrs X, who is a Russian citizen married to a European Union citizen, with two young children, worked at Pilatus Bank in January, February and March last year as a personal assistant to the CEO. She was not paid her salary at the end of January and told to wait until the end of February. At the end of February, she wasn’t paid either. In March, when she began to ask repeatedly for her outstanding salary, saying that she has young children and can’t afford to wait for her money, they handed her a notice of termination – without a cheque. She was told to expect her salary cheque in the post and it never arrived.

She kept ringing for her money and was never paid. She went to the Department of Industrial and Employment Relations and through the proper channels filed a report that her employer had failed to pay her.

The DIER did not take action at first, saying that it did not have a lawyer to handle her case, but she carried on chasing the matter. The DIER wrote to Pilatus Bank, and the bank wrote back saying it had paid her in cash (untrue – bank wages and salaries are not paid in cash) and that she was an intern and not an employee (untrue – she was PA to the CEO).

After several months, the DIER referred to matter to the police for action, because failing to pay employees is a criminal act. The police instituted criminal action against Pilatus Bank for failing to pay its employee. The case is ongoing and the next hearing of this case at the Courts of Justice is on 16 May.

As soon as Pilatus Bank received notice of prosecution for failing to pay Mrs X, they immediately filed a retaliatory police report against her, accusing her of using the bank’s money to pay for flights for her husband and children on a trip abroad.

Not only had the flights been booked with the consent and knowledge of her direct superior, the bank CEO, but they had been booked at his own suggestion when he asked her to travel for training with some other employees of the bank, and she pointed that she couldn’t travel freely on a Russian passport unless accompanied by her husband, an EU citizen, and he couldn’t travel with her because their children are too young to be left alone.

The police responded incredibly enthusiastically to Pilatus Bank’s report that a former employer had, months earlier, booked flights for her husband and children (missing piece of information: at the CEO’s suggestion). They had a warrant issued for Mrs X’s arrest, then arrested her and took her in for interrogation. They kept her in a cell from morning until night and the interrogating officer repeatedly told her “You did it. Admit it, you did it.” To which she responded: “Did what? How can I admit it when I don’t know what it is.”

Then they charged her with fraud before the Speaker’s daughter, a freshly-minted magistrate, the case is still ongoing, and she still hasn’t been paid her salary.

More abusively still, the police asked the Speaker’s daughter to allow them to sequester Mrs X’s passport, which is the property of the Russian government, her domestic Russian identification document (the equivalent of the Maltese ID card). The Speaker’s daughter complied, and Mrs X is now without documents and unable to leave Malta even for a day.

Last October, Mrs X’s mother died and the police refused to release her passport to allow her to fly home to bury her.

And then on top of all this, when she reports to the press the things she saw first-hand at the bank, and then volunteers herself for testimony before the inquiring magistrate – she could have stayed out of it and saved herself a lot of trouble and risk – the Prime Minister and his aides use their party-owned and party-influenced media to attack her with partial information about a case they know to be fabricated.

That’s how bad it is. This is the extent of the abuse we are dealing with here.