The Criminal Court has issued a variation order regarding the €30 million asset freeze it imposed on disgraced former Prime Minster Joseph Muscat last year.
Judge Edwina Grima authorised Muscat to use his three frozen bank accounts, two at Bank of Valletta and another held by an electronic money service provider EM@ney Plc, to settle some €187,000 in outstanding bills accumulated over the past several months.
According to the court order, Muscat can only use his accounts to pay a provisional tax settlement with the Inland Revenue Department of €118,298, €4,231 in unpaid stamp duties and €20,619 for outstanding VAT for 2024.
The court also authorised the disgraced former prime minister to settle a pending bill of over €25,000 for the tuition of his twin daughters at the elite QSI International School in Mosta and thousands of euros in arrears on personal loans and insurance.
In the order, published by the Assets Recovery Bureau Agency, the court also said that Muscat can use his frozen accounts to continue paying his monthly and yearly fees for a home loan, as well as health and home insurance.
Muscat is the first former prime minister of Malta to be arraigned in court and charged with bribery, corruption and money laundering, among other serious charges. When he was charged, the court imposed a freezing order on all his assets, including his bank accounts, totalling €30 million.
Muscat denies the charges and is fighting the imposition of the freezing order through separate court procedures, arguing that it is inflated.
His lawyers insist it should be limited to €60,000, which amounts to just three of the payments he received from Accutor AG — the same company that handled payments for the fraudulent hospital deal coordinated by Muscat’s government.
According to the Vitals inquiry, the disgraced former prime minister began receiving payments from Accutor AG soon after he was forced to resign in 2019. The Swiss company was registered in 2017 and appears to have been set up to process payments from the government of Malta to the hospitals’ concession.
Muscat was to act as a senior advisor to the company funded by the VGH concession, earning him €15,000 a month for three years, which could be renewed for another three years. The Vitals inquiry suspects this consultancy agreement of being a channel for kickbacks. The owners of Accutor AG were the same owners involved in the VGH concession.
Two payments of €15,000 each were made to Muscat in March and April 2020 before UBS bank stopped the payments and froze Accutor AG’s accounts due to suspicions of money laundering and payment of kickbacks to a PEP (politically exposed person).
Accutor AG then started paying Muscat his €15,000 monthly fee through another Swiss company, Spring X Media AG, run by Pakistani businessman Wasay Bhatti, the owner of Accutor. Two payments were made to the disgraced former prime minister before they were stopped again due to suspicions of money laundering by the banks involved.
Muscat insists that these payments were not kickbacks.
So did the Bahamas party and all the expensive lifestyle get settled by an overseas account of “friend”? Or maybe remains on someone’s credit card?
How come Maltese politicians (Pl and PN) don’t send their children to government school’s ????
normally it should work, that you present the invoice to the court and it will pay after having carried out the appropriate procedures, the subject cannot have direct access to the account…
It begs the question how he earned this fortune of money on a prime minister’s salary of approximately €68,000 net per year, which would not even reach a €1 million for the whole time he was Malta’s prime minister.
He wants to believe that he not guilty, trying to show his loyal followers that he feels like a King when corruption can pay well – NOT, according to the life prison sentence he is facing for his heinous crimes.
It’s incredible isn’t it? How can a Maltese ex-government employee have a freezing order of 30 million? Doesn’t it stand to reason that the guy is as bent as a nine-bob note? He still swans about the country like he owns the place! His mate Robert is equally as corrupt, but the majority of the population puts up with it! I despair of Malta!!!
Miskin! Maybe he cannot pay!!
So we don’t pay our bills but we travel abroad every week and seem to have no shortage of funds for travel and parties
Is it “normal living” to run up spending of newly 200k in a few months?
Michelle the distance swimmer seems to have no problems buying her designer handbags.
Although I prefer German sports cars which are more comfortable than Italian cars, I shall still accept to drive that Maserati after Joseph ‘Convictus’ Muscat is sentenced to life in prison since that vehicle (including his wife’s car) were both purchased from ill-gotten funds – not taxpayers money which would be too high risk to use.
Gangster, you can run, but you cannot hide from the TRUTH or the long arm of the law which will grab and punish you severely making you cry for your ‘mistakes’.
Ciao, and enjoy the one-way ride to jail in a correctional services van wearing double-secured handcuffs when his time comes to face justice for his heinous crimes.