The corrupt banker at Bank of Valletta, Chief Risk Officer Miguel Borg has sent his reply to my story about him via the bank’s corporate communications desk. However, strangely enough, the reply was signed by the personal lawyer of Miguel Borg and not the bank’s lawyers who are Camilleri Preziosi. Miguel Borg’s lawyer is Stephen Tonna Lowell who is also defending Brian Tonna of NexiaBT on charges of fraud and money laundering.
I attached the reply below which is an incredible admission of incompetence, self-incriminating, and also implicitly accusatory towards his colleagues at the bank. It is incredible how these amateurs are so incompetent that they chose the path of digging ever deeper into their hole.
Miguel Borg says he didn’t have any say in approving the loan as it was the Credit Committee who approved it. So, basically Miguel Borg, the Chief Risk Officer is saying that he didn’t do any due diligence on the €36 million to Steward, or at best, his due diligence was bad. Miguel Borg puts all responsibility on the Credit Committee. He is also a director at the bank. However, the Credit Committee would undoubtedly ask for information and due diligence on the loan, and if not, the Credit Committee would be making gross procedural errors which led to gross reputational and material damage to the bank. Indeed, according to its prospectus for its public listing, BOV underscores the reputational risk it may undergo for errors and unethical behavior by its officials.
If the bank is deliberately and willingly going against its prospectus, it can be sued for damages by its shareholders. The Credit Committee in 2018 was composed of Taddeo Scerri, Alfred Lupi, Mario Mallia and James Grech. All of them owe their board appointment to Joseph Muscat’s administration and James Grech was even a Labour general elections candidate. There’s more. The chairman of the Risk Management Committee was Joseph M Zrinzo, the father of Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi, today’s Planning Minister. It’s like a każin tal-Labour, but with Labourites pretending to be bankers.
In any case, the message in Miguel Borg’s reply is very clear. The government has a right to freely draw money from Bank of Valletta and the Credit Committee gave €36 million to Steward with no questions asked.
There are other interesting aspects to Miguel Borg’s reply. He says that upon reading my story, he asked the bank to investigate him and the bank found he did no wrongdoing. So, logically, one would have to assume that the bank is also investigating the Credit Committee, but there is no mention of that. Because what is it that has been done wrong here, actually? What’s wrong is that BOV loaned €36 million to a fraudulent project and a bank is supposed to do its due diligence to, in fact, prevent itself from doing such loans.
In the end, Miguel Borg, who has no relevant banking experience on large projects of this nature says, trust me, bro, I’m a good banker and I have all the experience, despite his LinkedIn showing no banking experience whatsoever other than working at BOV itself.
The reality is this. Bank of Valletta is run by a group of an incompetent clique of Laburisti and now they are in panic mode after realising that acting like bureaucratic stooges is not really in line with traditional banking principles. No one wants to take responsibility. It’s always “everyone needs to eat” and “I was just doing my job”. Sure you were, serving criminals and that’s why you were there in the first place.
“It’s like a każin tal-Labour, but with Labourites pretending to be bankers.”
Excuse me? You call these oeople Lanourites? I expect better from you Mr Camilleri
They are PL ers or Muscateers or even Bobby’s lackeys but not members of a labour party born out of the bowels if the dockyards in response to the inequalities perpetrated by our former colonial rulers