The United States Department of the Treasury has sanctioned another Malta-based company over its involvement with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its connections with the Vladimir Putin regime.
The new sanction addresses Swiss-Italian businessman Walter Moretti and his network of associates and companies, which includes the Malta-based Stratton Investment Group Ltd.
Moretti’s network of companies, according to the US Treasury, “have covertly procured sensitive Western technologies and equipment for Russian intelligence services and the Russian military, including hydraulic presses, armament packages, and armour plating”.
Moretti and his associates have also procured equipment for Russia’s nuclear weapons laboratories, the Treasury said.
The Malta-based company, Stratton Investment Group LTD, is owned by Taerio Limited. Moretti used the UAE-based company and Tamyna FZE, also based in the UAE, “in his covert procurement schemes”.
A Switzerland-based company in the network, Tamyna AG, has sent numerous large wire transfers to Taerio Limited, which, in turn, owns the Maltese company. Tamyna AG was also sanctioned for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of Moretti.
The Malta-based company, Stratton Investment Group LTD, is owned by Moretti through Taerio Limited and its directors are Moretti and Swiss Italian national Frederic Pierre Villa, who has also been sanctioned for his connection to Stratton.
It is not yet publicly known what part the Malta-based Stratton played in the network.
Also sanctioned were German national Markus Gerhard Mueller, Swiss nationals Ronald Eric Cosman and Bruno Koller , as well as the Switzerland-based company Swisstec 3D AKUS AG, for assisting Moretti in the procurement of sensitive Western technologies and equipment for Russian intelligence services and the Russian military.
“Due to the impact of sanctions and export controls, Russian intelligence services have been directed to find channels for evasion and backfilling,” the Treasury said in a statement.
The US Treasury sanctioned another Maltese company last November, a Malta-based luxury aviation company, and eight of its Malta-registered aircraft for its links to Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov and his family.
The Malta- and Russia-based aircraft management company Emperor Aviation Ltd “coordinated luxury travel for Kerimov’s immediate family, including [his daughter] Gulnara Kerimova, even after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.”
The US Treasury identified as blocked property eight luxury aircraft operated by the Birkirkara-based company. Founded and owned by Russian Irakli Litanishvili, the company offers aircraft management and charter, fuel and handling services from
Emperor Aviation has also been sanctioned for operating or having operated in the aerospace sector of the Russian Federation economy and for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of the Russian Federation.
Malta seems to be top of the list on attracting shady characters and business to our shores.
The worrying element is that it seems that we do not have the means and the expertise to monitor these criminal activities.
Why you think it’s criminal activity, Because your mentor tell you that or because maybe it’s Russian or something else?
I don’t think it’s just a case of ” we do not have the means and expertise to monitor these these criminal activities”…it’s more likely that ” we have the means and expertise to aid,abet and be part of these criminal activities”.
Although there is no link to the PL in this article, the story itself rather reminds me on what I have read so far from the ‘connections and practices and advises’ coming from people who were close to the former PM Joseph Muscat. There is no hint in the article that would suggest that he has anything to do with what the article tells, I refrain from any sort of allegations. Just the similarities are quite to see there. Maybe some have taken some example for themselves. It sometimes works both ways without any part knowing from the other, I suppose.
Curious how some patterns ‘re-produce’ itself. Profiteering always finds various ways to prevail and helpers who assist ‘with pleasure’ as long as the money comes in.
I suppose that the Maltese government has no (real) control on whether sanctions regulations in place were followed up to by local companies in Malta which operate on an international level. Otherwise if the government would have a grip on that, things must have developed rather differently. Another example for the present PL govt, as a result of undermining the functionality of the institutions by paralysing these with incompetence and partisan vested interests by those who are involved in the failing of the institutions.
Many times we said and wrote that Daphne was right. After Judge Francesco Depasquale’s judgement on the Vital’s scandal, the OCCRP was also right about Joseph Muscat.
What is the Foreign Minister and the AG waiting for?
MALTA – The scum island acting as Putin’s /Russia’s military prostitute while also prostituting its fake Constitutional Neutrality clause to the detriment of Ukraine.
Robert Abela and his government are now not only complicit of multiple murders of immigrants seeking humanity in safe harbours in the sourrounding seas, but also complicit in the razing to the ground of Ukraine and the murders by its bloody ally Putin of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainin solders, civilians and children.
Robert Abela – may this mantra of mass murders boomerang on you and yours.