WILL THE US ATTORNEY IN MIAMI USE THE PORTMANN CAPITAL CASE TO TAKE DOWN MALTA'S CESSPOOL OF MONEY LAUNDERING CRIME ?

Miami to Malta: 5,430 Miles

While we have little hope that Malta's do-nothing law enforcement and regulatory agencies will ever change, and arrest the individuals who engaged in money laundering at Pilatus Bank and Satabank, the case presently pending agaisnt Portmann Capital in US District Court in Miami could provide relief. US courts have interpreted the Money Laundering Control Act of 1986 as having extraterritorial jurisdiction. This means Maltese money launderers, never having set foot in the United States, can still be charged with money laundering, provided US Dollars, or US banks, were involved in any signficant way.

It is conservatively estimated that Portmann moved $511m out of the total $1.2bn stolen or diverted from Petroleos de Venezuelan (PDVSA), the state-owned oil and natural gas company, through Malta's financial institutions primarily Pilatius, though others are implicated. Certanly, the opportunity exists to expand the scope of the current Miami-based Federal investigation, so that the Pilatus bad actors, and their corrupt circle of enablers and facilitators, are named in superseding indictments. Go ahead, name all of the players.

Mr. prosecutor, let the jury sort it out. You certainly have sufficient evidence to take such a case to trial. The principal cooperating witness, Matthias Krull, who received a 10-year sentence back in October, 2018, is still out on bail, and not scheduled to begin his prison sentence until Septmber, must surely have implicated most, if not all, of the Pilatus directors, among others. We imagine Ali Sadr will also be assisting with the prosecution.

Unless the United States takes the proverbial "Bite out of Crime" and charges the Pilatus defendants, including their facilitators, who happen to be formerly (or presently) in government, and shakes up the corrupt money laundering establishment in Malta, there will never be any real reform issued from the top, just more of the current posturing about increasing indicments and enacting new regulations. Only when Maltese start going to US prisons will anyone ever clean up Malta.