An investigation into the career of a Maltese academic named in connection with alleged meddling in the 2016 US election has uncovered a trail of disappearing acts but cites a source contradicting reports that he may be dead.
Prof. Joseph Mifsud has a bizarre academic career punctuated by scandals and disappearing acts, according to an investigation carried out by Associated Press. The investigation also uncovered an international trail of mismanagement and financial problems stretching over a decade.
A court document made public last year by US prosecutors alleged it was Prof. Mifsud who dropped the first hint of the hacking that rocked the 2016 US election when he met Donald Trump adviser George Papadopoulos on April 26, 2016, in London and told him the Kremlin had “thousands of emails” on his Democratic presidential rival, Hillary Clinton.
When Prof. Mifsud’s name first surfaced in connection with US special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, the academic denied discussing emails with Papadopoulos or having any connection with Russia. He then fell off the map for nearly a year, leading some to speculate he might be dead.
Prof. Mifsud’s Swiss-German lawyer, Stephan Roh, assured AP that the Maltese academic is alive and has disputed almost all the allegations against him, saying via email that the 58-year-old had not committed any crime and that the claims levelled against him were either old, unsubstantiated or consisted of what he described as “defamatory departing music”.
Read: Joseph Mifsud is a mystery to Italian authorities too
AP sent photo of academic
The lawyer said he last heard from his client earlier this month through an intermediary and last saw him face-to-face in May.
His office sent AP a photograph of the Maltese academic, sporting three-day stubble and seated across a signed power of attorney document. Metadata embedded in the picture, including geographic coordinates and altitude data, suggest it was taken with at Roh’s office in Zurich on May 21.
The news giant uncovered at least three previous efforts by Prof. Mifsud to drop out of the public eye after being caught up in controversies. Laris Gaiser, a Slovenian crisis consultant who was brought in to investigate Prof. Mifsud’s tenure at the Euro-Mediterranean University, said that going off the grid is his “modus operandi”.
In early 2016, Prof. Mifsud would introduce Papadopoulos to Russian International Affairs Council representative Ivan Timofeev and the latter two would go on to speak for months about potentially arranging a trip by candidate Trump to Moscow.
Timofeev has repeatedly declined to discuss Papadopoulos when quizzed about him by the AP.
Mifsud vanished without explanation from a venture he helped set up between Moscow State University and another university in Rome in late 2016
Prof. Mifsud vanished without explanation from a venture he helped set up between Moscow State University and another university in Rome in late 2016, according to Moscow State academic Yury Sayamov, who said that email addresses for Prof. Mifsud and his deputies at the London Academy of Diplomacy suddenly stopped working and phone calls went unanswered.
A reporter travelled to Malta in August in a vain attempt to locate the academic. When the AP visited Prof. Mifsud's old address in Swieqi on August 13, his wife appeared at the balcony, only to retreat inside when she realised a reporter was at the door.
Last year, two separate Italian police forces failed to find Prof. Mifsud in relation to yet another university funding scandal in Sicily, according to Italian court records . Prof. Mifsud was a no-show at his trial in the Sicilian port city of Palermo, where he was last month ordered to hand back more than €49,000 in overpayments.
“Maltese politicians who once smiled for pictures with Prof. Mifsud now barely seem to remember him. Roh said in his book that former associates were treating the academic as a plague victim,” the report concludes.