Police officer to testify over alleged Attorney General’s order not to prosecute Pilatus top brass

Judge orders police financial crimes officer to testify on instructions given by Attorney General in Pilatus Bank money laundering investigation after bank's top brass were not charged

Pilatus Bank owner Seyed Ali Sadr Hasheminejad and other top officials have not been charged by the police despite a magistrate requesting international arrest warrants for them to be brought to justice
Pilatus Bank owner Seyed Ali Sadr Hasheminejad and other top officials have not been charged by the police despite a magistrate requesting international arrest warrants for them to be brought to justice

A judge has ordered a police inspector to testify about claims that the Attorney General issued instructions not to prosecute senior Pilatus Bank officials last year.

Mr Justice Christian Falzon Scerri has ordered Inspector Pauline D’Amato from the Financial Crimes Investigation Department to testify and exhibit correspondence exchanged between the department and Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg, regarding the nolle prosequi issued by the Attorney General in February 2021, in favour of Antoniella Gauci and Mehmet Tasli. 

The inspector has also been ordered to exhibit copies of international or European arrest warrants issued by the Courts of Magistrates between December 2020 and February 2021, following the conclusion of the magisterial inquiry into Pilatus Bank which had ended around that time.

The decree was handed down in the case filed against the Attorney General by rule of law NGO Repubblika.

According to sources with knowledge of the investigation, last December amidst pressure from civil society about the failure to press charges against Pilatus officials, senior police officers at the Financial Crimes Investigation Department (FCID) had pressed the junior prosecutor handling the case to find the International Arrest Warrants issued against Mehmet Tasli and Antoniella Gauci which had been issued by magistrate Ian Farrugia in February 2021 - but which had never been sent to law enforcement agencies abroad. But the prosecutor was unable to trace the warrants in question, which seem to have disappeared.

MaltaToday had reported that these arrest warrants had not yet been served in January this year. That same month, the senior FCID officers requested that the same warrants be issued again, and they were duly issued by Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech.

The judge ordered D'Amato to appear in court next month to testify about the background and context behind the request for international and European Arrest Warrants that she had filed before inquiring magistrate Ian Farrugia in February 2021. The court ordered her to exhibit copies of the warrants.

The judge also ordered the inspector to give the court a first-hand account of the action taken by the FCID from December 2020 to June 2022, following the conclusion of the magisterial inquiry into Pilatus Bank.

The judge also ordered that a copy of the application and the resulting decree ordering the inspector to attend be handed to her in person.

Repubblika, through its lawyer Jason Azzopardi, is alleging that AG Victoria Buttigieg had issued what is known as a nolle prosequi - an order not to prosecute- vis a vis Pilatus Bank owner Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, its operations supervisor Luis Rivera, the bank’s director Ghambari Hamidreza and bank supervisor Mehmet Tasli. 

Last July, Repubblika had filed proceedings against the Commissioner of Police and the Attorney General, presenting affidavits in court, declaring that Tasli had testified in October last year in a separate case and was allowed to leave the island, instead of being arrested on the strength of international and European Arrest Warrants issued against him by the Maltese courts.

Repubblika say that since then, they have discovered that in Summer last year, Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg had issued a nolle prosequi, a mere 4 months after receiving the 600,000 page inquiry, which recommended that Gauci and Tasli be prosecuted. 

Section 569 of the Criminal Code grants the AG the authority to go against the recommendations made by the inquiring magistrate and issue an order not to prosecute. Up till recently, the President of the Republic would also have had to be notified of such an order, but this requirement was removed from the Criminal Code two years ago.

The Maltese nolle prosequi being alleged, should not be confused with a separate nolle prosequi issued in Sadr’s favour by a district attorney in the USA, where he faced charges of breaching international sanctions on Iran. The US proceedings had no connection to Malta.

The now-shuttered Pilatus Bank was based in Ta' Xbiex and a magisterial inquiry into its operations has led police to charge the bank itself and one top Maltese official with money laundering. However, no further action has been taken as yet against the bank's owner and other senior officials.

READ ALSO: Pilatus money laundering | arrest warrants not yet served to bosses