BICAL Scandal • October 12 2003

Paying oneself over Lm1.8 million

Magisterial inquiry appointment into activities of BICAL controller stalled

Emanuel Bonello, the controller who captained the Pace assets into oblivion between December 1984 and December 2002, paid himself over Lm1.8 in administrative fees, MaltaToday has learned. The revelation comes as MaltaToday can reveal that in 1997 under an Alfred Sant government, a magistrate was appointed to look into the serious allegations of fraud allegedly committed by Emanuel Bonello the controller of the BICAL bank. Magistrate Noel Cuschieri was appointed to the job after police investigations that took place in 1997. After Cuschieri’s appointment as judge, the case is now in the hands of Lawrence Quintano a newly appointed magistrate.

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Emanuel Bonello had replaced Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici as controller. Bonello who at that time worked closely with Martin Bonello Cole his son’s run firm, Grant Thornton Malta, awarded himself huge administrative fees from BICAL funds that exceeded the monies issued to the BICAL depositors when the bank was forcibly closed by Dom Mintoff’s government.
Bonello made his thousands from BICAL’s funds at a time when the controllers had argued there was no money to dish out to depositors.
The police investigations were carried out with much enthusiasm by senior officials, but the police commissioner of the time, the disgraced George Grech who has a handsome paid job with a parastatal company, was not anxious to see the investigations progress.

Emanuel Bonello, amassed exaggerated fees from BICAL funds as unlucky depositors waited in vain. He was also responsible for the sale of assets belonging to Cecil Pace which would have easily met the required funds owed to depositors The investigations did however catalyse Bonello to make two separate payments to the depositors.
After a Labour government fell from grace because of another Mintoff intervention, Bonello, even though widely recognised as over-sympathetic towards the Labour party, was not removed by the new Nationalist government and kept on as controller.
Strangely the court appointed accountant Joe Sammut, a former acolyte of Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, to prepare a report on the transactions carried out by the controller. The report has not been concluded even though seven years have elapsed.
It appears very unlikely that any steps will be taken to look into the allegations levelled at the former controller considering the government’s position on the BICAL scandal