Last year, on February 24th, a Maltese magistrate signed an arrest warrant against Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, the owner of Pilatus Bank. Despite the arrest warrant, the police have so far refused to arrest him. Someone from the attorney general’s office has also admitted that they had withheld their criminal proceedings until they “study” a notice from a kangaroo court in Hong Kong which basically has no legal relevance to the case in Malta.
Ali Sadr Hasheminejad has been accused of laundering illicit money from top Maltese government officials and his bank has also been used to launder the money of family members of Azerbaijan’s dictator Ilham Aliyev and his top officials. So, far, there has been a constant effort by Maltese authorities to cover up the Pilatus case. The previous top police financial crimes investigator was fired for refusing to investigate Pilatus Bank amongst many other cases and is now working as a government-employed tour guide. There was also collusion between top government and state officials and Ali Sadr. The rot at Pilatus Bank goes as far as the previous Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and his wife and was also the cause of an early election called by Joseph Muscat in 2017 after it was alleged that his wife, Michelle Muscat, received payments from Pilatus Bank to her offshore company called Egrant.
The attorney-general, Victoria Buttigieg has far failed to prosecute any Maltese politician from Joseph Muscat’s administration with corruption. She has proven to be grossly incompetent and is being asked to resign from her post by the lawyers, the police, civil society, activists, journalists and many others. Only the government supports her.
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