Just when she thought the persecution was over, Maria Efimova, the whistleblower who helped expose the corrupt ties between organised crime and Malta’s political establishment, found that the nightmare was back. On Monday 17 November, Pantelis Varnava, Efimova’s husband, was put under arrest in Crete following a request from Cyprus' authorities.
Maria Efimova is a former employee of Pilatus Bank who in 2017 passed on data to Maltese anti-corruption activist and investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia revealing that a secret Panama-based company – Egrant, Inc. – belonged to Michelle Muscat, the wife of Malta’s former prime minister Joseph Muscat. Caruana Galizia had been investigating an intricate web of corruption and money laundering schemes in Malta based on the information contained in the 2016 Panama Papers scandal. Six months after Caruana Galizia published this information she was killed when a car bomb was detonated inside her vehicle as she drove close to her home.
