Alexandros Papasteriopoulos, Maria Efimova’s lawyer, speaks to Reuters during an interview on March 29. Photo: Reuters
The Russian whistleblower, who alleged that Prime Minister Joseph Muscat’s wife held a Pilatus Bank account to receive corruption money, claims police in Malta mistreated her during interrogation.
Maria Efimova, who is currently under arrest in Greece over two outstanding Maltese warrants, was interviewed in Greek newspaper Kathimerini over the weekend.
According to court documents Ms Efimova made available to the Greek newspaper, she was interrogated by two Maltese police officers back in August 2016.
In a report she filed with the Maltese authorities, the whistleblower claims she was mistreated, alleging that one of the officers pushed her and took her mobile phone while two Pilatus Bank executives sat in on the interrogation.
She also claimed one of the police officers insulted her while the other repeatedly said he was convinced that she was guilty.
“The policemen who interrogated me told me, ‘We are friends of the bank’, and they even pressured me to apologise to the bank executives they had brought to the police station,” the newspaper quotes her as saying. One of the police officers who interrogated her has since quit his position with the Maltese police and Ms Efimova now says he is willing to come to Greece to testify in her favour.
Read: Pilatus whistleblower fears for her life - lawyer
Ms Efimova had worked closely with the late journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and was a central figure in the Pilatus saga.
Her surrender in Athens happened on the same day as the chairman of Pilatus Bank, Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad, was arrested in the United States on charges that he participated in a scheme to evade US sanctions and funnel more than $115 million.
The whistleblower, who fled Malta after Ms Caruana Galizia’s murder last October, worked as the bank owner’s private assistant from January to March 2016.
“I had worked in a bank before and had experience in compliance departments. I often told them, ‘What you are doing is illegal’,” she told Kathimerini.
Her problems with the bank, she claims, began when she claimed unpaid wages.
Ms Efimova said the bank then moved against her, accusing her of using company money without authorisation to pay for her husband and children’s airline tickets to Germany and Greece, and for her father-in-law to fly from Cyprus to Malta.
The Greek courts are scheduled to hear Malta’s request for Ms Efimova’s extradition on April 12 and her lawyer Alexandros Papasteriopoulos said that while she was in good shape, she was “emotionally upset”.