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Continued from last week
Matthew Vella
In the second part of former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff’s deposition in Court, appearing before the Court of Magistrates in the lawsuit which has held this newspaper liable for damages for reports on the Bank of Industry, Commerce and Agriculture (BICAL), the former Labour leader denies allegations he had sent messengers to demand that Cecil Pace, the director-shareholder of BICAL, transfer 50 per cent of his shareholding to Mintoff’s nominees.
MaltaToday first reported that Cecil Pace had been asked by Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, Mintoff’s acolyte and once the Central Bank’s controller for BICAL, to transfer his shares to Mintoff’s nominees.
Mintoff said he never sent anybody to ask for the BICAL shares to be transferred to him, in neither his name nor Government’s.
“I asked whoever was involved then whether they had made such a proposal behind my back and without my consent, and Dr Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici confirmed he never made this proposal,” Mintoff said in Court. He also said that Frans Dalli, who had also been alleged by Cecil Pace to have been present for the meeting, had told him the facts were in actual fact, to the contrary: “Anyone else who is still alive and who was mentioned in this report confirmed that, not only had I not sent them with this proposal, but that he would never think of doing something like that.”
The BICAL saga which featured on MaltaToday trailed for two months and serious allegations were made by Cecil Pace on Mintoff’s role in the downfall of his bank. Pace was found guilty of having misappropriated funds and of committing fraud.
Mintoff denied he had ever offered Pace any prime government contracts for him to carry out, citing it was ‘impossible’ for him to offer government contracts as Labour had just been elected to power then and because Pace was ‘no contractor.’ “It was he who used to create work because he had millions in his hands.”
He said he would have never dreamt of transferring government’s salary accounts to Pace’s bank from Barclays, as alleged by Pace. He also denied that there had been any form of nationalisation frenzy at the heart of the then Labour government. “I don’t know what a nationalisation frenzy means. In Malta there was no nationalisation to be done. After the BICAL question, we had learnt… we created another bank and saved their depositors, and that bank became the Bank of Valletta. It is not true that when I was in Government, there was some nationalisation frenzy.”
Mintoff also denied any form of personal revenge on Pace. He claimed Pace never meant him any harm and said that he had done him a favour for never seducing him into depositing his money in BICAL. He explained that all legal procedures which were taken in the compilation of evidence and prosecution of Cecil Pace were undertaken by the Legal Office, and claimed that he never had any hand in the question of the accusations of fraud: “It is true that I used to butt in and have a hand in Government’s final decisions, but whether there was fraud or not was not my business.”
Mintoff denied having contacted the Judge who presided over the sentencing of Cecil Pace, after MaltaToday had reported that Cecil Pace was informed by a Court marshal that Mintoff had consulted with the presiding Judge by telephone ahead of sentencing. “I did not intervene in the prosecution. I only butted in on general matters and I still butt in today as a citizen.”
Concluding his deposition, Mintoff has also claimed that he wrote a letter to MaltaToday editor Saviour Balzan to disclaim all accusations, but that the letter was published with an ‘added dose’ because “what I [Mintoff] wrote was not convincing enough. I inform the Court that I am not in the business of converting people, but I want to make my position clear.”
Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, former Labour Prime Minister and BICAL controller, is representing Dom Mintoff.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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