LCILP delegation with Link Campus university pic.twitter.com/DcNqxHGPVT
— Nagi Idris (@nkidris) May 25, 2016
Joseph Mifsud, the professor at the center of the Russia-SpyGate scandal, was not just a faculty member of Link University but also a co-investor with the institution.
According to Italian news site Il Foglio, Mifsud owned 35% of Link International, 55% of which was owned by Link University.
Mifsud, along with Vincenzo Scotti helped to start Link University in Rome in 1999 as a subsidiary of the University of Malta. Scotti would become its director while. Mifsud would become head of international relations.
Link was the first foreign university allowed to operate within Italy. Over the years it would forge many connections to the world’s intelligence community.
Scotti had held several positions within the Italian government since the 1960s. He was the country’s interior minister from 1990-1992. That position would place him at the head of the country’s domestic intelligence services.
In 1992 he also served as the minister of foreign affairs for a short while. The last time he held office was as undersecretary of state at the foreign affairs ministry from 2008 to 2011.
It is Scotti who Mifsud says suggested he disappear after Mifsud’s role in the Russia scandal became public.
Mifsud, in April 2016, told then-Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos that Russia possessed “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. That statement would become the genesis of the Russia investigation.
Mifsud denies making that statement and also says that introductions he offered to make between Papadopoulos and Russian connections were at the urging of Scotti.
Mifsud has not been seen publicly since at least 2019. Bizarrely, his passport was found in Câmara de Lobos, a popular tourist town in Portugal, in August of 2017 – three months before he disappeared but six months after he was reportedly interviewed by the FBI in the Russia investigation.
Link university says it cut ties with Mifsud soon after the news of his involvement in the Russia affair broke. It would later be revealed that Mifsud hid out in a Rome apartment for several months. The rent of that apartment was paid for by Link University.
Link has said in the past that it did pay the rent for that apartment but did not know Mifsud was there.
Mifsud’s various connections with and through Link University have been known for some time but recent developments relating to Italy put the old developments in a new light.
Allegations are now made that operatives in Italy manipulated the U.S. general election on Nov. 3, switching votes from President Trump to Joe Biden. That operation was supposedly carried out in various locations in Italy using technological infrastructure owned and operated by Italian defense contractor Leonardo SpA.
SpyGate, as well as ItalyGate (as the election scandal has become known), were allegedly funded by $400 million from the Obama administration earmarked for Iran but funneled illicitly to Italy.
Leonardo is currently under investigation along with tech giant Google for laundering money used as bribes for company officials.
Mifsud’s whereabouts are currently unknown and Democratic National Committee lawyers as well as Italian media have reported at various times over the last several years that Mifsud may be dead.
Maria Zack of NationsInAction.org, the organization spearheading the ItalyGate investigation, says in the course of her investigation she has learned that Mifsud is alive and living in the United Arab Emirates.