Collusion Alleged Between Maltese Gaming Regulator and Casino Owner Murder Suspect
A Malta Gaming Authority (MGA) functionary helped the casino proprietor accused of masterminding the slaying of a prominent Maltese journalist to order of payment a varsity letter to get a gaming certify extension, The Times of Malta reports.
This is the a la mode(p) allegation of collusion 'tween Malta’s gaming regulator and Yorgen Fenech, who was the biggest cassino proprietor inwards the Mediterranean Sea nation until his 2019 hitch inward connector with the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Emails seen by the Times show that inwards 2015 Edwina Licari, the MGA’s legal counsel, ghostwrote a missive for Fenech requesting a certify prolongation for the Portomaso casino, owned past Fenech’s Tumas Gaming Group. The alphabetic character was and then printed away on a Tumas Gaming letterhead, signed by Fenech, and sent to Licari’s boss, and so MGA chief executive director Chief Joseph Cuschieri.
Cuschieri was to the full aware Licari was the tangible author because he had been cc’d in on the email yarn betwixt Licari and Fenech. Weeks later, Cuschieri wrote to Fenech to say the permission would be renewed.
Cuschieri Denial
The conclusion was controversial. In 2017, a rival casino operator, Dragonara Gaming, sued the MGA claiming the file name extension was illegal because there should experience been a militant unconscious process allowing additional parties to adjure for the license.
When contacted past the Times this week, Cuschieri denied in that respect had been any collusion 'tween himself and Fenech, adding that the letter inwards enquiry had no more bearing on the permit renewal.
In May 2018, both Cuschieri and Licari enjoyed an all-expenses-paid stumble to Las Vegas with Fenech to apprize him on “regulatory matters,” the Times discovered.
Cuschieri has also admitted having luncheon on get on Fenech’s racing yacht in August 2019, deuce-ace months before his arrest.
Fenech is alleged to feature organised Galizia’s 2017 railroad car bomb kill via a middleman, Melvin Theuma, perhaps to preclude her exposing that a administration take to build a power send inward Republic of Malta may have been corruptedly awarded to Fenech’s company.
Government Implodes
Fenech’s check finally brought cut down the government. Revelations that a society Fenech controlled had been preparing to do big payments into casing accounts owned by Malta’s former muscularity government minister and the ground minister’s chief of stave triggered resignations, including that of so Prime Minister Chief Joseph Muscat.
The trial run of Fenech and ternion others accused of Galizia’s slay is ongoing.
Earlier this month, the Times revealed that Cuschieri’s successor, Heathcliff Farrugia, had quiet resigned shoemaker's last January after he was accused of trading inwards work with Fenech.
Police investigating Galizia’s slaying found incriminating conversations on Fenech’s sound which indicated Farrugia had provided Fenech with commercially sensitive information concerning competitor gambling casino operators. Farrugia also leaked inside information of an anti-money laundering investigating that was existence carried out on the Portomaso Casino, according to the Times.