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(ID Number 242669M) Who Confirms Under Oath

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To the Inquiring Magistrate Court Application before the Duty Magistrate by the Hon. Simon Busuttil (ID Number 242669M) who confirms under oath: Respectful applicant:- That on the 13th of March 2013, the Hon. Konrad Mizzi took the oath of office as Minister for Energy and Mr Keith Schembri was appointed Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister; That on the 14th of March 2013, the partner in auditing firm Nexia BT Karl Cini sent an email to the the firm Mossack Fonseca in Panama, to begin the process to open “companies in Panama and possibly a trust”; That the firm Nexia BT is owned by Brian Tonna who is very close to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and who right from the start of Prime Minister’s Muscat administration received a great number of direct orders amounting to hundreds of thousands of euros and preferential treatment in a variety of profitable ventures; That on the 21st of March 2013, Karl Cini sent Mossack Fonseca a reminder whereby he clarifies that the beneficiary of one of the companies “will be an individual”, not Nexia BT, and that details about the individual would be given over a Skype call. He also requests to be made the new contact person for another 3 companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, owned by Keith Schembri (Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister), Malcolm Scerri (general manager of firm Kasco on behalf of the same Keith Schembri), and Mr Adrain Hillman, while asking for the owners to be concealed behind “nominee shareholders”; That the application for these companies ticks the boxes marked “No Audit” (allowing no auditing) and “Total Secrecy and Confidentiality” (that they are to be kept in absolute secrecy and confidentiality, with no information shared with any authority including in Malta); That in the same week, the firm Nexia BT registered also the company Torbridge Services Inc in the British Virgin Islands; That on the 12th of April 2013 the Prime Minister removed John Rizzo from Police Commissioner for no reason; That in May 2013 Mossack Fonseca opened an office in Malta. The shares are 100% owned by Brian Tonna. This office shares the space with the Nexia BT’s office in San Ġwann; That in October 2013 Socar (the energy company of the Government of Azerbaijan), Gasol (an African company) and a party of investors from Malta, won a contract for a new gas-fired power station; That in December 2013 that company under which Pilatus Bank operates was registered in Malta; That in February 2014 Torbridge Services Inc was transferred from Brian Tonna to Cheng Chan, a high official in Shanghai Electric Power; That on the 11th of March 2014, Shanghai Electric Power signed an agreement with Minister for Energy Konrad Mizzi on behalf of the Government of Malta, to purchase the BWSC power station for €220 million and 33% of Enemalta for €100 million; That in December 2014 Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, Minister Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and Kurt Farrugia, responsible for communications within the Office of the Prime Minister, visited Azerbaijan for meetings with the President of Azerbaijan and for which no Maltese journalist, no member of the diplomatic corps, and no member of the Maltese public service was present, where the agreement for the purchase of fuel was signed without any member present from the Fuel Purchasing Committee. The people of Malta only come to know of this visit after reports in the Azeri media; That in February 2015 a new Ministerial Code of Ethics was published and removed the requirement for Ministers to declare assets in the name of their spouse; That in March 2015 the Auditor General’s Office published a report on the hedging agreements of 2014 and criticized Minister Konrad Mizzi for the unprecedented ministerial interference in the purchase of fuel, and confirms that Enemalta lost €14.1 million from this deal; That in April 2015 Prime Minister Joseph Muscat visited Azerbaijan again and for a second time, no journalist or civil servant was present; That in June 2015 Minister Konrad Mizzi signed a statement by Nexia BT that Hearnville Inc will take care of transactions financed by “personal assets and revenue from business”, and that Hearnville “has not yet started traded, and will eventually receive funds from consultation and commission.”; That on the 22nd of July 2015 Minister Mizzi’s company registered in Panama (Hearnville Inc) was transferred to a trust in New Zealand on the same day that Gasol sold its shares in Electrogas to the other partners in the consortium for an unspecified amount (although according to The Malta Independent was tens of millions of Euros); That the company owned by Gasol is also a client of Mossack Fonseca. That in August 2015 Pilatus Bank, whose owner is a 32-year-old Iranian national travelling on a St Kitts and Nevis passport, obtains the license to operate as a bank in Malta after it was refused a license in other European countries; That in September 2015 emails that later emerged in the Panama Papers reveal that Nexia BT made multiple attempts at opening accounts in different jurisdictions for the three secret companies; That on the 15th of October 2015, Karl Cini sent an email to Mossack Fonseca to explain how the companies owned by Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri will operate in the sectors of “recycling and remote-gaming”; That on the 26th of November 2015 Karl Cini sent an email to Mossack Fonseca asking about a requirement by the banks of a deposit of one million US Dollars and indicates that “They (Schembri and Mizzi) are asking about these million dollars. Is this only the opening deposit? Is there a minimum running balance that they have to leave in the account?”; That on the 2nd of December 2015, after BSI Bank in Panama answered by email that an annual deposit of one million is required, Karl Cini confirms that he has received approval by Schembr and Mizzi for these accounts to be opened “for the two companies in Panama”, and this when it is a known fact that the income and perks of Minister Mizzi and Chief of Staff Schembri are much less to justify such annual deposits; That on the 10th of December 2015 Mossack Fonseca sent an email to Nexia BT to inform them they encountered a problem in opening the accounts, because the bank that was going to be used, was acquired by another bank that now required account holders to have a Panamian visa; That on the 15 of December 2015 Karl Cini replied that he was collecting the necessary information. Emails stopped here as the hacking into the Mossack Fonseca servers published in the Panama Papers end on this day; That in February 2016 minister Konrad Mizzi declared that he opened a trust in New Zealand to manage his family assets but withholds information that this also holds a company registered in Panama; That on the 27th of February 2016 it was revealed that Keith Schembri has the exact same financial structure as Minister Konrad Mizzi, a trust in New Zealand which conceals a company registered in Panama; That on the 11th of March 2016 photographs were taken of boxfuls of shredded paper disposed of by the offices of Nexia BT and collected by vans from the firm Kasco; That on the 3rd of April 2016 the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) published the Panama Papers internationally, leaking 11.5 million documents and emails hacked from the servers of Mossack Fonseca; That on the 27th of April 2016 Michael Cassar resigned from Police Commissioner after only a few hours of receiving an FIAU report on these secret companies; That on the 2nd of August 2016, FIAU director Manfred Galdes resigns; That when the European Parliament PANA Committee (set up after the Panama Papers scandal) visited Malta in 2017, its chairman German MEP Langen publically declared that the facts exposed bere above point towards a text book case of money laundering. That the crime of money laundering, and/or the attempt of the crime of money laundering is punishable by a prison term that well exceeds the three years according to article 546(1) of the Criminal Code; The applicant respectfully asks the Inquiring Magistrate to conduct a Magisterial Inquiry as per article 546(1) of the Criminal Code while declaring his full disposition should the Inquiring Magistrate so deem. Adv. Jason Azzopardi Adv. Kris Busietta 7, Cospicua Road, Paola, Malta .
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