Opinion: Keith Schembri was the centre of the web

When I read that Keith Schembri had a fake email address of ‘Frank Pillow’, as The Shift’s investigation revealed, I immediately thought of the fake newspaper passed off as Malta Today some years back.

But ‘Frank Pillow’ is a far cry from the ridiculous fake sites set up in 2020. This ‘Frank Pillow’ alias reveals a more sinister plot.

It shows that the hospitals plan was being carried out in parallel with Electrogas, and many of the same people were involved in it.

I don’t just mean the usual inner circle of Schembri, Konrad Mizzi, Joseph Muscat and Yorgen Fenech.

Vitals Global Healthcare frontman Ram Tumuluri was looking to get in on the Electrogas action using an offshore company called Dempsy Investments Ltd, emails show. 

The British Virgin Islands entity wasn’t owned by Tumuluri, of course. The ultimate beneficial owner — at least on paper — was fellow Vitals director Mark Edward Pawley.

Shaukat Ali Abdul Ghafoor was also involved. The hidden beneficial owner of Vitals helped Schembri and Mizzi open Dubai bank accounts that were alleged to be used for their secret Panama companies.

And Pakistani Wasay Bhatti shows up again, too. A mutual friend introduced him to Fenech when Fenech needed help moving a pile of money after Noor Bank in Dubai shut down 17 Black’s account. 

Investigators didn’t say who that “common friend” was, but some of Joseph Muscat’s highly suspicious post-resignation consulting payments came from companies controlled by Bhatti — payments allegedly linked to the hospitals concession.

What did the crooks behind Vitals have to do with Electrogas?

The year was 2015 and the ink on the Electrogas contract was still wet but Gasol, the leading company in the consortium, was in serious trouble. It had to sell off its shares in a hurry before its insolvency brought the entire plan down.

The Vitals mob must have smelled a chance to cash in — with a little help from their insider friends.

The hospitals inquiry revealed that Schembri and Mizzi were secretly guiding Ram Tumuluri and Bluestone / Vitals in their negotiations with the government, and that Yorgen Fenech was keeping ‘Frank Pillow’ informed of everything being said on the Electrogas side.

You don’t have to be a cunning businessman to know how to strike a deal when you’re eavesdropping on both parties.

It must have been exhausting for him to jump back and forth between roles, with ‘Keith Schembri chief of staff’ looking after the government’s interest even as ‘Frank Pillow’ looked after his own.

Did Schembri’s left hand know what his right hand was doing? ‘Frank Pillow’ was certainly better informed than the Maltese government. They were only notified in late July 2015 that Gasol was selling out, but ‘Frank’ heard the news from Yorgen Fenech at least a month earlier.

Schembri denied all knowledge of these Gasol negotiations when he testified before the Public Accounts Committee in March 2023 but the latest investigation by The Shift reveals he was at the centre of them. 

Lying under oath is a crime punishable by imprisonment, but I suppose perjury is the least of Schembri’s transgressions.

This should have violated the concession agreement, but Konrad Mizzi’s buddy David Galea was there to help out. Galea’s consulting company Beat Ltd played a key role on the evaluation committee that made sure Electrogas got the energy concession. 

When another committee was cobbled together to decide whether Electrogas still fulfilled the conditions of the bid without Gasol, it rubber-stamped the departure of the lead member and 30% shareholder. 

The National Audit Office later found that the government and Enemalta had amended the contracts with Electrogas to permit this previously prohibited transfer.

Keith Schembri was at the centre of it all, pulling the strings as ‘Frank Pillow’. 

You can read the sordid details in The Shift’s investigation.

The wise crook commits nothing to writing to preserve deniability.

Schembri used a Yahoo account. Mizzi used his personal Hotmail account. And Joseph Muscat was so concerned with the integrity of official communications that he used his josephmuscat.com email account rather than his government one.

But careful readers will also remember what Keith Schembri said at the public inquiry into Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination: “I never did anything behind the prime minister’s back.”