The European Central Bank has revoked the licence of Malta’s Pilatus Bank after its chairman was arrested in the US on money-laundering charges.<\/p>\n
Malta’s Financial Services Authority announced the move, saying it had called on the ECB to take action.<\/p>\n
Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car-bomb a year ago, accused the bank of processing corrupt payments.<\/p>\n
The EU has been investigating the bank ever since her murder.<\/p>\n
However, it was not until March that the Maltese authorities froze the bank’s assets, following the arrest of its chairman, Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad.<\/p>\n
According to an indictment filed in a federal court in Manhattan, he is accused of involvement in a scheme to evade US economic sanctions against Iran.<\/p>\n
The Maltese FSA recommended withdrawing the bank’s licence in June, but the process took longer than expected because of legal obstacles, the ECB has said.<\/p>\n
Caruana Galizia reported on Malta for\u00a0the Panama Papers investigation into offshore accounts which conceal secret payments<\/a>\u00a0to politicians and other powerful figures.<\/p>\n She accused Pilatus Bank of various crimes, including dubious payments to senior Maltese and Azerbaijani figures.<\/p>\n Three men suspected of killing her – brothers George and Alfred Degiorgio and their friend Vince Muscat – were arrested during a police operation in December 2017.<\/p>\n They were charged with murder and pleaded not guilty at a court hearing. They remain in custody.<\/p>\n source: bbc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The European Central Bank has revoked the licence of Malta’s Pilatus Bank after its chairman was arrested in the US on money-laundering charges. Malta’s Financial Services Authority announced the move, saying it had called on the ECB to take action. Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed by a car-bomb a year ago, accused the bank of processing corrupt payments…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2388","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2389,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2388\/revisions\/2389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/theamericasblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}