|
Matthew Vella
An irate Joseph Zammit Maempel, the chairman of the Lotteries and Gaming Authority, flares up at questions by MaltaToday on his top officials’ past connections with the gaming industry.
The question asked: whether Zammit Maempel is pleased with the impartiality of those senior LGA employees who previously enjoyed considerable influence within the gaming industry as shareholders in private companies operating gaming outlets and other ancillaries on the island, namely Legal and Enforcement director Anthony Axisa, a former shareholder in Camilmac Gaming, and CEO Mario Galea, a former shareholder in an internet solutions company which offered its services to internet gaming companies.
“I’m not going to pick seminarians,” Zammit Maempel responds. “The experience has to come from that sector. You don’t expect me to employ somebody who doesn’t know anything about casinos.”
But Zammit Maempel accuses MaltaToday of harbouring an agenda and attempting to “pull down the church [he] built”, referring to the gaming authority: “This is a team I am proud of. Now someone is trying to use you because of a decision taken at the authority which has affected them negatively, and trying to create obstacles,” Zammit Maempel says.
Questions asked about the past connections of Anthony Axisa, a lawyer who is today the Legal and Enforcement Director at the authority, are met with defensive haughtiness: “I am pleased and proud with my team. They don’t have a conflict. They made their declarations as according to the law and I am monitoring my employees. We’re not imbeciles here. We know where they have been working.”
Formerly involved in the Amusements Trades Association, Axisa had to divest his shareholding in Camilmac Gaming Ltd, the operators of arcade centre Portside Lounge in Gzira, four months after having taken up his post as Legal and Enforcement director with the LGA. Whilst the conflict of interest may have disappeared, Zammit Maempel refuses to disclose why it lingered on four months between Axisa’s appointment in February and the divestiture in July:
“These matters were left hanging for diverse reasons. But these reasons are none of your business. I won’t divulge anything personal about my employees.”
Despite the dissolved partnership with Ivan Camilleri, the shareholder with whom Axisa started Camilmac Gaming in 2002, the lawyer had already been a legal advisor to the Lotteries and Gaming Authority prior to its new set-up in 2004. The company was set up to import, distribute, supply, consult and operate in the gaming business.
Zammit Maempel also shrugs off questions about Axisa’s presence at a Christmas celebration on 17 December at Portside Lounge, claiming he had delegated Axisa to the premises when he received an invitation at the authority itself.
“He went to a party for which we received an invitation. Shouldn’t a finance minister go to a bank? Would this be wrong?”
Axisa’s belated divestiture equally mirrors that of CEO Mario Galea, one of the architects of the Maltese online gaming regulations of 2000 and 2003, who had not disposed of his shareholding in Bell Med Ltd, which services internet gaming operators, until 10 May 2004, four months after becoming the authority’s chief.
Zammit Maempel defends his credentials as chairman of the LGA: “I will keep on taking care of the LGA as according to the law and will keep on doing this notwithstanding Matthew Vella,” referring to MaltaToday’s investigations on Mario Galea’s private interests, after being declared by the Ministry of Finance as having been free of any conflict of interest.
The Office of the Prime Minister also declared Galea free of any conflict of interest after the CEO divested his shareholding in June 2004 to a nominee company, Knights Corporate Business Ltd, which falls under the directorship of Gatt Galea & Co’s senior partners: Richard Galea, Franco Privitelli and Raymond Gatt.
Also players in the internet gaming industry, assisting in the creation of international trading companies for gaming operators, Gatt Galea & CO’s nominee company remains just another legal structure for trustees to act on behalf of clients which do not wish to have their names appear on paper. And as directors of Knights, Gatt, Galea and Privitelli appear as the trustees for whoever owns Computer Aided Technologies, and for that matter, Bell Med Ltd.
Zammit Maempel plays on analogy: “If an Internazionale footballer is sold to Juventus, does it mean he should be suspected of holding favours for Inter? These are employees who made their declarations and relinquished their interests.”
matthew@newsworksltd.com
|
