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Matthew Vella
“I know Frank Farrugia, and Frank Farrugia knows who I am,” Claudine Cassar says, a statement which carries much importance in the aftermath of the Joe Zahra case. It’s her first reaction at learning that Farrugia told a criminal trial that he never knew who she was, as he recounted the first time Joe Zahra – the sham private investigator found guilty of fabricating allegations of kickbacks in a multi-million government contract – was asked to look up the name of the young entrepreneur.
“This man is saying that somebody else pointed him in my direction and that he had to get a private investigator because he did not know who I was, when I know that is not true,” Cassar says, whose ordeal at the hands of a police investigation into the Joe Zahra report starts in June 2003 when she is mentioned by somebody as a possible link in a suspected chain of kickbacks. That someone was part of the Medea Consortium, which is assisting Dutch firm Simed in its bid for the lucrative Mater Dei medical equipment contract. Frank Farrugia is the representative of Simed in Malta – according to Farrugia’s testimony in the criminal proceedings against Joe Zahra, somebody from Medea had asked him: “What do you know about Claudine Cassar?” to which Farrugia responded: “I don’t even know who she is.”
3 page 1 This is strange to Claudine Cassar, the daughter of the former Director General of Contracts Joseph Spiteri. “In an affidavit he presented to the court in a libel case instituted by my father against him, Farrugia admits to knowing me personally, since I knew his daughter for years. The substance was basically that he knew I was his daughter’s friend. This is a man whose home I visited regularly for years to spend time with his daughter – this is a man who knew me very well.”
That’s why Farrugia’s statement in the Zahra criminal prosecution bothers Cassar, who is steadfast in her belief that the saga of the Joe Zahra fabrication, believed to have cost the political career of a minister, is far from over. “Someone started a witch hunt, and told Joe Zahra to dig up some dirt. When Zahra couldn’t find any, he invented it. So it is obvious that now nobody wants to be associated with this witch hunt, and nobody wants to take responsibility for it, particularly after we have seen its dramatic effects and results. Whoever started this witch hunt has caused irreparable damage to many people.”
In late July 2004, the investigation into the notorious private investigator’s report started after Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi handed over the four-pager to Commissioner of Police John Rizzo. Claudine Cassar was one of those summoned to the police headquarters for questioning by John Rizzo – according to Zahra’s report, Cassar had made several trips to Italy, as her father’s representative; there
she was alleged to have met people from INSO, the Italian firm which clinched the Mater Dei tender; the report claimed she was accompanied by Bastjan Dalli, the brother to former finance and foreign minister John Dalli, for a EUR2.3 million transaction that, in fact, never existed.
“I left St Luke’s hospital where I had spent the night with my daughter who was sick. I arrived at home in the morning at 9.00am, where I received a call on my mobile from someone claiming to be the Assistant Commissioner telling me to come to the depot. I thought it was a bad joke at first, in fact I called the depot back to confirm whether this was true or not – unfortunately it was! I was taken into an interrogation room, was read my rights, then they switched on the tape recorder, and as soon as I realised I was being questioned by the Commissioner and two Assistant Commissioners, I realised this was serious.”
Cassar started being asked questions about her travels to Italy, meeting up with people from INSO, Bastjan Dalli and a EUR2.3 million transaction from a Hong Kong bank. “Then everything practically fizzled out when the Commissioner asked me where I was in March 2003. I told him that on 28 March, my daughter was born. At that point the Commissioner started laughing, and told me ‘there’s no better alibi than that’. From that point onwards, the interrogation was more light-hearted. I was told a report had been presented to the prime minister, although not who had written it. I learnt that in the papers some time later.”
Cassar was shocked that the report could be taken seriously by Simed, considering the negative media reports surrounding Joe Zahra’s career. “How could he have been taken this seriously, without any evidence to back up his allegations?”
Maybe Cassar was too successful for some people at Medea or Frank Farrugia. Her web development company was one of the fastest growing companies in the field, emerging as the leader in the sector. But her father was also the Director General of Contracts, who presided over the raucous, long-drawn tender award of the Mater Dei medical equipment, in which the first ever public contracts appeals board was instituted, to consider Simed’s appeal against the original decision which favoured INSO.
“To me that is the only reason,” she says referring to her father’s position. “To me it’s quite clear that they investigated my father, but they could not find anything illicit in his doings. So they decided to look around and see who in his family was successful and found me. And incidentally, you can see the pattern of thought – in a newspaper interview with the Malta Financial and Business Times back in December 2002, I had stated that I arrived from Naples on business – and based on that interview, an entire saga was invented.”
Now Cassar wants justice after a court found Joe Zahra guilty of fabricating the allegations. “Why doesn’t someone stand up and say they commissioned the report and take responsibility for it? Why doesn’t someone admit to have commissioned it, believed it and even taken it to the prime minister?”
And it was clear that Joe Zahra was clearly believed by people like Frank Farrugia or the late Joseph Fenech, the lawyer assisting Simed in their appeal. According to assistance commissioner Michael Cassar, Zahra’s report “was like the Bible” to Fenech – certainly it was believable enough for them to take it to the prime minister personally.
“Are they going to apologise? They damaged my reputation, and affected my father dramatically, whose long and successful career as Director General of Contracts was tainted with their mudslinging. Of course, no mud stuck – but it’s no way to end your career. He deserved better. The Joe Zahra report damaged both myself and my father, and it obviously also damaged all the other people implicated in the report.”
Cassar is categorical about her next step: “I want to assure you that once all this is cleared, my father and myself fully intend to take the necessary legal steps to get justice. We want to get to the bottom of this and see where the responsibility for all this lies. The time has come for the truth to be told.”
mvella@mediatoday.com.mt
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