George Mangion, a columnist who writes regularly for sister newspaper, Business Today has been summoned to appear before the Permanent Commission against Corruption to testify on the contents of an article which appeared in the newspaper on 18 April 2007, Malta Today can reveal.
The article, called ‘Money laundering has become an issue’, dealt with the large amounts of hoarded cash currently in circulation where he makes reference to the sources of undeclared funds, which could also contain money coming from tax evasion, including undeclared earnings, as well as possibly illicit money from drug deals.
Mangion wrote that up to April 2007, there was a reported Lm 520 million in undeclared cash running around, which is equivalent to Lm 1,300 per capita. He also made extensive reference to several money laundering cases including a case revealed by Malta Today in 2002 and another involving a certain Maria Abela where deposits of GBP 164,000 ended up in a Swiss bank account.
When contacted, Mangion was irate at this new development, adding that he was merely attempting to highlight the difference between certain cases and how these were treated by the courts.
“After I was called by Inspector Cordina from the Economic Crimes Unit to explain details of corruption which could have been in my possession, I explained that I have no specific information other than what had been quoted in an internet source that referred to the investigative reports published by Malta Today in the past in relation to the Anastasi report (Mid-Med Bank scandal), and that this was public knowledge just like the BICAL scandal. I cannot exclude that what instigated this summons was a result of what The Times columnist IM Beck had written about me, when he sarcastically suggested that I should look up the word ‘plethora’ in the dictionary before I passed any comments. I also wished to contrast the prison sentence of seven years handed down to Maria Abela for merely pocketing Lm 7,000, when a much bigger case involving judges and drug money ended up with a simple two-year sentence”.
The case number is 364/1/07 and is described as a request by the Commission to take any steps which are necessary on corruption allegations made by George M. Mangion and which appeared in the Business Today of 18th April 2007.