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Matthew Vella
The charges brought against Joe Zahra, 50, the private investigator and former Where’s Everbody consultant accused of fabricating evidence in an investigation he carried out on the contentious Mater Dei tender for the supply of medical equipment, have revealed the extent of Zahra’s compulsive prevarication.
MaltaToday is informed that a team led by Commissioner John Rizzo and two assistant commissioners had already asserted themselves of the fabricated evidence provided in Joe Zahra’s report, which had been handed earlier on to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, when just two weeks ago the police inquiry was interrogated people implicated in Zahra’s report.
Members of the Simed and INSO consortia, the two main contenders for the tender, and members from the Foundation for Medical Services were amongst those questioned by Rizzo.
Zahra also implicated relatives of the Director of Contracts of having made frequent trips to Italy where millions of liri had been allegedly stashed away in the country. This newspaper was informed that prior to interrogations, the police team had already asserted itself that the alleged bank accounts did not exist, and that the dates of travel into Italy had been proved to be inconsistent – in one case, Zahra claimed somebody had travelled to Italy when they had actually been in hospital in Malta.
A cordial Police Commissioner John Rizzo declined from divulging any information on whether the investigation had already concluded the extent of Zahra’s fabrications prior to interrogating the people implicated in the report: “It would be a breach of my professional ethics if I had to divulge any evidence prior to presenting the evidence in Court.”
Asked whether the police were already aware of Zahra’s previous embroilment in the fabrication of evidence in the case of Sapri Broker back in 1995, investigated in connection with the mysterious death of an Italian public official, Rizzo said he would not “confirm nor deny” whether this fact had been acknowledged in their investigations.
“The evidence we shall produce in Court will be the ones pertaining to the charges levelled against Zahra,” Rizzo said.
Contacted by MaltaToday, Joe Zahra refused to comment on the accusations in his report.
Joe Zahra is not new to the game of fabrication, as reports dating back to 1995 reveal how the former police sergeant had fabricated evidence in an investigative report he compiled on Italian company Sapri Broker, an offshore company registered in Malta.
Zahra’s footnote in the history of the trials that investigated the scandal-ridden Tangentopoli started back in April 1995, during the investigation into the mysterious death of Sergio Castellari, ex-director general of the Italian government’s Partecipazzioni Statali.
Rome Magistrate Gianfranco Mantelli, who was conducting the investigation, stumbled upon the company Sapri Broker, whose director was Massimo Bassi, whose company’s administration included the names of former Italian Communist Party treasurer Renato Pollini and his deputy Vittorio Brilli.
But the Maltese connection started off with a different twist, and one which was to prove damning for the Italian prosecution. The episode unfolded following the start of a divorce suit between Sapri director Massimo Bassi and his wife. Looking to assert herself of the total amount of her estranged husband’s wealth, Bassi’s wife appointed Italian investigators Blue Fox to take a look at his Maltese operation, Sapri Broker.
Blue Fox engaged Joe Zahra, the director of Professional Private Investigation Agency, then located in Regency House in Valletta, to carry out the investigations. Zahra returned with a number of documents in which millions of liri in transactions and money laundering had allegedly occurred.
It had only been some days after Zahra’s dossier had reached Italy, that Sapri’s wife died in a car accident. Blue Fox decided to hand over the evidence to Mantelli, who commenced investigations into Bassi’s operations.
The Italian magazine Panorama was soon to get hold of the very same documentation. Zahra himself had called Panorama’s newsroom of his own free will, informing them of his investigations. In similar and unequivocal circumstances as the ones in which Zahra has found himself once again at the centre of controversy, the PI sent, against payment, a series of false documents with the rubber stamp of Mid-Med Overseas Limited to Panorama, allegedly money laundering transactions tracing Malta, Rome and Hong Kong.
Six months later, it was proved that the evidence had in fact been fabricated. The Rome prosecutor, Mantelli, archived the case, irate that Zahra’s false evidence had effectively derailed an entire investigation into the mysterious death of Castellari.
Mantelli decided to launch an inquiry into the witness and the false documentation of banking transactions supplied by Joe Zahra, now liable to charges of serious deviation of investigation. Questions abounded on Zahra’s child play. Why had he deliberately derailed the investigations?
The Economic Services Minister at the time, George Bonello Dupuis, would later comment to Nationalist Party organ In-Nazzjon that criminal steps would be taken against Zahra if necessary, and that the Maltese government would investigate anyone who attempted to “tarnish Malta’s name with such base and treacherous methods”.
But the consequences of Zahra’s action had resulted in a serious derailment of the Italian investigation which had been looking into the mysterious death of Sergio Castellari.
Soon enough, Mid-Med Overseas Limited also commenced its own investigations, revealing that Joe Zahra had actually acquired one of the bank’s rubber stamps to authenticate his documents.
The Italian military’s secret service (SISMI) also launched its investigations into the case, which compiled a 300-page dossier in which Zahra was mentioned as having fabricated the evidence in the interests of people who wanted to manipulate Italy’s main political parties.
Sergeant to turncoat freemason
Joe Zahra had served in the Police Corps as a sergeant back in the tumultuous days of disgraced police commissioner Lawrence Pullicino, who was charged with the murder of Nardu Debono on 29 July 1980 in the police depot. As commissioner, he had the duty to ensure this crime did not happen. Pullicino was accused of false testimony in the criminal case against Vincent Debono, who had been sentenced to 15 years of planting a bomb, and in a magisterial inquest in the Nardu Debono case.
In 1993, Joe Zahra was implicated in the prosecution of Pullicino, having kept a diary of conversations he had with Superintendent Charles Cassar, a member of the notorious, North Korean-trained Special Mobile Unit, the precursor of today’s Special Assignment Group. According to Zahra’s testimony, Cassar had met him back in 1991 asking to speak to Lawrence Pullicino personally, who at that time was under house arrest and incommunicado. Zahra acted as an intermediary to convene Pullicino and Cassar, but the former police commissioner refused to meet Cassar.
Zahra left the police corps in 1991 and opened a private investigative firm, Professional Private Investigative Agency, located at Regency House in Valletta. He employed a number of ex-policeman in his agency, namely Denis Balzan, Guido Muscat, John Falzon, and Tarcisio Vella.
Joe Zahra also served as personal chauffeur for former Labour Minister Lorry Sant. In recent years he was employed as a consultant in the Where’s Everybody? team, in which he conducted several undercover investigations for the production house. These included the filming of a meeting between freemasons in Valletta, to which he had had access to the Marsamxett Lodge having been a freemason himself; and a Satanic black mass whose authenticity was widely-debated both in the English-language press and by Labour MP Adrian Vassallo in Parliament.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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