Pilatus Bank owner Seyed Ali Sadr Hasheminejad will be released on bail “in the next week or two” once US court conditions are met, his lawyers told Times of Malta.

He stands charged with money laundering and violating economic sanctions on his native Iran.

Just hours later, whistleblower Maria Efimova said she had been threatened. She said this in a Tweet in which she also shared a link to a story reporting that Mr Hasheminejad had been granted bail in the United States.

Ms Efimova later confirmed that she had filed a report about the matter to the police in Greece, where she is currently residing. The Russian national did not elaborate on the nature of the threats or their origin.

Ms Efimova, who fled the island last year, was behind allegations that the Panama company Egrant was owned by the Prime Minister’s wife, Michelle Muscat. The claim, which was first reported by slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, is strongly denied by both the Prime Minister and his wife.

The Maltese courts subsequently issued a European and international arrest warrant against her and she turned herself in to the Greek police. She appeared before an Athens court, which refused to extradite her to Malta.

Mr Hasheminejad’s lawyers said their client was granted bail by a New York court over the weekend. The conditions imposed included electronic monitoring and making of “multiple bonds” secured by a variety of assets both belonging to him and also his “family and many friends”.

“He remains in custody until all of the conditions are met, which should be in the next week or two,” the lawyers said.

According to submissions for bail filed earlier this month, the former chairman of the Ta’ Xbiex-based bank claimed he has a net worth of $24 million, including $12.9 million equity in Pilatus Bank.

Read: Money used to set up Pilatus Bank from ‘criminal proceeds’

It was alleged during one of the bail hearings that the money used to set up Pilatus Bank had come from criminal activities in Venezuela.

A consortium of journalists working on the Daphne Project have found that a network of over 50 companies and trusts secretly owned by Azerbaijan’s ruling elite had used accounts at the bank to move millions of euros around Europe.