The Nationalist Party’s new home affairs spokesperson Joe Giglio – a one-time lawyer to the shuttered Pilatus Bank – has declared having “serious reservations” on the credibility of Maria Efimova, a former bank employee who famously told assassinated journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia that the Panama company Egrant belonged to former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s spouse.
Giglio told Andrew Azzopardi on Malta’s Heart this morning, that the Russian whistleblower, who never provided evidence of her claims in a magisterial inquiry, that he knew her as “a malevolent woman capable of getting herself into certain situations... I had said back then that if the documents did exist, then no one would be able to see them but her.”
Giglio had served Pilatus Bank when Efimova was accused of using the company credit card to organise a training trip to Frankfurt, which she used to book herself a room and for her husband and child.
The bank filed a police report, and Efimova rebutted by claiming she had not been paid her wages. Giglio insisted Efimova had defrauded the bank, and even dismissed her claims of abuse by police officers.
Giglio said he had reservations about Efimova’s claim that she was in possession of documents linking Egrant to Muscat. “Backed as I was by crystal clear evidence that her claims that the bank hadn’t paid her were inaccurate I had known Efimova as a person who can manipulate facts. However, I had hoped that perhaps she was telling the truth on the [Egrant]...
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