BICAL • November 92003

Injustice unlimited

How controller Emanuel Bonello prized thousands of liri out of the BICAL assets’ wealth, with depositors and creditors waiting thirty years to have their monies returned

Controller Emanuel Bonello had already started taking up his duties as BICAL controller before Dom Mintoff appointed former controller Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, as his unlikely successor in 1984. Between 1984 and 2002, Bonello would ensure that almost Lm1.8 million of BICAL funds would come his way, in a series of overpriced auditing and accounting fees, emoluments to accountants seconded from his accountancy firm – Grant Thorton – and ridiculous annual payments for services rendered to ‘safeguard’ the BICAL assets and repay BICAL depositors and creditors.
It is interesting to note that the Paces believe KMB was never a beneficiary of BICAL’s wealth. All throughout his tenure, KMB never kept proper check of the assets he sold, and the monies he collected and deposited, and carelessness was the timbre which characterised his role as controller. KMB’s negligence demanded his successor to start off in 1984 by compiling all yearly accounts since 1973. It is Emanuel Bonello, who between 1984 and 2002, ensures that the final 20 per cent of depositors and creditors remaining to be paid from BICAL funds, are delayed as much as possible, in order to ensure his ‘hefty’ paperwork can demand hefty fees.
Why was BICAL bank, whose licence had been suspended and not terminated, kept under control for 30 years to pay Lm1.5 million back to depositors?
How did controllers manage to usurp Lm1.8 million in controllership fees from BICAL assets and yet still take 30 years to pay all depositors, today awaiting the final 20 per cent payment?
Why was BICAL left under control when the excess of controller fees meant there had always been more assets than liabilities, Lm1.5 million in all owed to BICAL creditors and depositors?
Why did the Nationalist government, an alleged beneficiary of 360,000 Pounds Sterling from BICAL monies in 1972, take a back seat to defending the Pace family when it commenced legal action against the controllers after 1987?
Why did the Nationalist government pass a specific law in 1995 (Controlled Companies Act), unanimously approved by both sides of the House, that transferred all pending cases on controlled companies such as BICAL from the First Hall of the Civil Court to an Appeals Board composed of three Finance Ministry-appointed lawyers and exonerating controllers, the Appeals Board and the Government by giving them legal immunity, since day one of their appointment (including KMB)?
Where was PN’s cry of democracy and justice in the nineties, the reverberation of which broke down the corruption of Labour in 1987?