Joseph Mifsud’s lawyer claims Russiagate’s Maltese professor was Western spy

The Maltese academic believed to have been the spark for a devastating allegation that Russia could help the Trump campaign with “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, was taken into hiding by an Italian spy – according to the Swiss lawyer assisting him.

In comments to Italian news agency ADNKronos, Stephan Roh said Joseph Mifsud, an academic associated with the Italian private Link Campus university, was forced into hiding by a top Italian intelliegnce official so as not to compromise FBI director Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Russiagate scandal – the alleged collusion between Moscow and US president Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign team.

“I think Mifsud is still alive, he was at least until last Spring. I know he was hiding because he feared for his life, I also know that someone forced him to hide. Mifsud had to disappear, because he could compromise the whole investigation of Mueller against Trump,” Roh told ADNKronos.

Was mystery Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud an Italian spy? Here’s the latest Russiagate twist

‘Joseph Mifsud a spy? He spoke too much’ says Rome university colleague Vincenzo Scotti

But Roh’s claims have been strenuously denied by Mifsud’s employer Link Campus University, which has accused the lawyer of being a trafficker of fake news, and even of trying to frame Mifsud.

Roh has represented Mifsud since May 2018, and personally delivered to the counter-investigation now being carried out by Attorney General William Barr, the famous tape containing Mifsud’s deposition and a transcript of declarations recorded by Mifsud at the law firm. Barr has been tasked to investigate the origins of the Mueller investigation, sparked by information from the Australian government of a conversation between Mifsud and Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos on ‘Russian dirt’ on Clinton, by way of thousands of hacked emails held by the Russians.

Roh described Mifsud as having been “devastated, a completely different man from the one I had known. He feared for his life”.

Roh, who denies links with the Russian government and has a Russian wife, has published his own account of the Russiagate scandal, claiming the Democratic presidential campaign and then US government manipulated the democratic process by fabricating the Russiagate scandal.

Roh said he thinks Mifsud’s movements are restricted and that he cannot communicate as before, and believes the Barr investigation is of the idea that Mifsud is not a Russian agent. “I had indirect contact with him through his family. In Spring, a friend of his had direct contact with him and told me he was in Italy, in Rome. Personally, the last direct contact I had with him was at the end of last year.”

Roh’s own R&B Investment Group also has a 5% stake in the Rome-based Link Campus University to which Mifsud is linked. With Mifsud, he attempted to win over new investors and other universities for cooperation with Link, which included several trips to Russia between 2016 and 2017.

Roh claims Mifsud “was lost, he had no real high-level contacts”, and that contacts with the Russian Lomonosov university were provided by Link director Vincenzo Scotti, the former Italian minister.

But Roh claims that Mifsud is not a Russian agent, but works – or has worked – for Western intelligence services.

“He was engaged in ‘missions’,” Roh says, specifically mentioning the British MI6 to which Roh claims Mifsud was directly linked through the London Center of International Law Practice, for which he worked. Roh claims the LCILP was “simply a cover for intelligence operations”, where both Mifsud was a once a board member, and Papadopoulos an LCILP director for energy issues.

“If Mifsud speaks, he has the evidence to prove the things he said on and off the record. It would be a big deal for a lot of people in the United States,” Roh said. “The serious crime was not the spying on Trump, but the fabrication of evidence to justify Mueller’s investigation,” he said.

“Mifsud was then hidden and threatened to support the investigation. Nobody disappears like that in Europe, except over matters of state or if the mafia is involved. In my opinion, Joseph must cooperate with the investigation, he is a victim.”

Roh claims that Mifsud left Rome soon after Russiagate broke, went to the small Marche town of Matelica, and according to his own recorded deposition now in Barr’s hands, got into a waiting car with the “number-two” of Italy’s secret services present. “Mifsud confirmed to me that one of the heads of an Italian secret services agency contacted Scotti during the time the scandal broke and recommended that Mifsud vanish.”

Roh claims Mifsud gave him this information off the record “with the microphone turned off and without naming anyone” and that Mifsud aso did not specify which sector of Italy’s secret services the alleged ‘number two’ belonged to.

Roh said Mifsud hid in Matelica until December 2017, in a house that belongs to the friend of Link Campus director Vanna Fadini, a claim she has strongly denied.

He also claims Mifsud left Matelica for Malta at the end of 2017 “to visit his parents, who had health problems” before returning to Rome at the beginning in 2018, and even “used an Italian identity card in the name of Joseph Di Gabriele, I think it was his mother’s last name. He showed it to me,” Roh said.

Mifsud was convinced would soon be able to return to his normal life, Roh said. “He told me, as soon as the Mueller Report comes out I will be out of this story,” because “everyone was convinced that the report would lead to Trump's impeachment.”

Link Campus University has dismissed Roh’s claims as “the umpteenth series of defamatory lies”.

“Stephan Roh has turned out to be a vulgar liar, a real fake news trafficker and those who published his claims without verifying the credibility of the source is a de facto accomplice. According to his own version of events, Roh appears to be the only ‘key witness’ of the affair, he is ‘the last to have seen Mifsud’, the only one to know the movements of his client and it is he, together with Papadopulos, to accuse his client of being a M16 agent,” Link said, accusing him of an attempted plot to frame Mifsud.