FIAU requests info on Yorgen Fenech from financial services practitioners

Financial services practitioners have been given until today to supply the anti-money laundering agency with information on their dealings with Yorgen Fenech, MaltaToday has learnt.

Audit firms, financial services companies, fiduciaries and other operators in the industry have been asked to notify the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit of any services or dealings they had with Fenech and around 60 companies he is or was involved in.

Industry sources said the FIAU issued the request for urgent response to operators last Thursday and gave them until tomorrow to provide the information. Documents will then have to be submitted by the end of the week.

The request was made on the basis of anti-money laundering legislation.

Fenech is a person of interest in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder investigation and was arrested last Wednesday as he was leaving Malta on board his yacht.

So far, it is unclear what Fenech’s link to the journalist’s assassination is but sources said police have widened the scope of their investigation to include money laundering.

In November 2018, Reuters said the FIAU report was passed on to the police in the spring of 2018 and had identified Fenech as the owner of the Dubai company.

The significance of 17 Black is the fact that it was one of two companies – the other being Macbridge – listed as target clients of the Panama companies opened by Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi after the 2013 election. The owner of Macbridge has so far remained elusive.

Fenech resigned his directorships from all family companies of the Tumas Group on 12 November but retained his shareholding. He also resigned as a director from Electrogas, the company that built and runs the Delimara gas power station.

However, the documents formalising his resignations were submitted with the Malta Business Registry on 19 November. Less than 24 hours later Fenech was stopped from leaving Malta by two army patrol boats.