Pilatus loan perjury case: ‘I didn’t invent €1m transaction’ says sacked FIAU investigator

A former FIAU investigator charged with fabricating a false accusation in the Egrant scandal – Jonathan Ferris – exhibited a copy of a compliance report into the now shuttered Pilatus Bank in court, as he took the witness stand.

Ferris is accused of false testimony to the magisterial inquiry that investigated the alleged ownership of a secret Panamanian company by the former prime minister’s wife, first reported by Daphne Caruana Galizia.

Ferris had told the magistrate of a €1 million loan from one of the daughters of Azerbaijani president Ilham Alijev, to Michelle Buttigieg in the United States – the latter a former business partner in the Buttardi jewellery company with Michelle Muscat, wife of Joseph Muscat.

The Egrant inquiry, led by Magistrate Aaron Bugeja – today a judge – could find no evidence of the alleged ownership of the company, and ordered perjury charges against Ferris.

Ferris today told the court that in 2017 he had been asked to draft questions for Pilatus Bank employees after an FIAU inspection that revealed multiple compliance breaches. The discussion with FIAU lawyer Anton Bartolo happened on the very day Caruana Galizia broke the allegation that Muscat was the owner of Egrant, one of the secret offshore companies revealed in the Panama Papers.

Ferris discussed the unexplained €1 million transaction flagged in the compliance report, which he gave to the court, with FIAU director Kenneth Farrugia. Ferris said Pilatus Bank – closed by the financial regulator in 2020 – went to great lengths to protect its clients’ confidentiality.

“I didn’t just invent the €1 million euro, it emerges from the compliance report,” Ferris said.

In a subsequent FIAU meeting, Farrugia informed Ferris of interviews to be held at the MFSA for Pilatus officials. But on Saturday, 29 April 2017, Ferris was informed by FIAU deputy director Alfred Zammit not to be present at the office, which was to host an important meeting.

Ferris complied, only to receive a phone call from police insperctor Lara Butters to discuss allegations made against him by Maria Efimova – the woman later revealed to have been a former Pilatus Bank employee and whistleblower to Caruana Galizia.

On 1 May, 2017, Joseph Muscat announced an early election, having set in motion a complaint to the courts to have Caruana Galizia’s allegations against him, investigated.

The next day, the FIAU directors told Ferris to withdraw from any investigations because of Efimova’s accusations against him when, as a former police inspector, Ferris had investigated her on a criminal complaint by Pilatus Bank of misappropriation of funds,

Ferris told the court he stood his ground, denying having any conflict of interest in the FIAU investigation. He said his FIAU bosses told him he would be kept out of the loop. “I became a ghost,” Ferris told the court.

Allegations

Ferris said the FIAU made use of Caruana Galizia’s blogpost of 19 April, 2017 titled “Company owned by Leyla Aliyeva of Azerbaijan made ‘loan payments’ to Hearnville, Egrant and Tillgate.”

He also told the court that it had been disgraced former EU commissioner John Dalli – whom he also questioned on other cases he had been investigating – who told him that Egrant stood for “Election Grant” and belonged to the Labour Party. Dalli had been investigated by Ferris over allegations that his companies had been involved in a Ponzi scheme that defrauded American investors. His two daughters have since been charged with money laundering, fraud and misappropriation. The case itself had been covered in astounding detail by Daphne Caruana Galizia months after Dalli’s secret Bahamas trip was splashed on the New York Times.

Ferris claimed that the CEO of the Labour Party, had claimed that the election campaign had set the party back some €1.3 million – so he decided to investigate the bank transactions, to check whether the declared donations made sense in the light of this figure.

Ferris also recalled an incident in which a police inspector contacted him after the Malta Independent published excerpts of a leaked FIAU report on the LNG tanker and its suspected connection to corrupt transactions in Malta. Asked to testify to Magistrate Aaron Bugeja at the time, Ferris says that he was advised by FIAU director Kenneth Farrugia advised to submit just four pages of the leaked FIAU report. Upon meeting Bugeja for the inquiry, he says he was surprised at the presence of police inspector Ian Abdilla – then an FIAU board liason for the police – instead of the inspector who had called upon him.

The case was adjourned to February, when Ferris will be cross-examined. Lawyer Jason Azzopardi is assisting the defendant.