Sacked FIAU officer vows to release Pilatus docs on Azerbaijan

The sacked FIAU investigator Jonathan Ferris claims he will produce documents alleging millions of euros were processed by Pilatus Bank for powerful Azerbaijanis.

Ferris is seeking an unfair dismissal claim in the Industrial Tribunal after being sacked from the FIAU while still in his probationary period. But the Attorney General is arguing that Ferris is still bound by FIAU secrecy requirements, which apply to former employees, and that Ferris’s affidavit to the tribunal divulges secret FIAU information “illegally and abusively”.

In comments to The Times of London, Ferris, a former police inspector who is now working as a security manager for a hotel, insisted that the government is attempting to stop him publishing further accusations that allegedly detail Malta’s mysterious links to Azerbaijan’s ruling clan.

“I will fight to get this information out, which is really damaging for the state and for the politicians and other government officials involved,” Ferris, 44, said.

The Attorney General wants to hold the proceedings of the unfair dismissal claim behind closed doors.

The Civil Society Network, which organised three demonstrations in the wake of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, said finance minister Edward Scicluna should explain whether he was involved in the sacking of Ferris and Charles Cronin from the FIAU.

Scicluna had commented publicly that certain FIAU reports and excerpts of an unfinished investigation had been written up with an intention to be leaked to the press.

The FIAU’s board is appointed by the finance minister, and is chaired by Attorney General Peter Grech, whom the CSN want dismissed.

The CSN said Scicluna had to declare whether he had any involvement in the sacking of the two men after the 2017 general election. “The Maltese deserve that their institutions truly operate in the interest of the common good and do everything necessary to establish the truth with regard to the resignations of Commissioner Michael Cassar and Dr Manfred Galdes and the sacking of Jonathan Ferris and Charles Cronin. A lack of willingness to establish the truth about such vital episodes in our nation’s life would mean that in Malta we would have institutional omertà.”