A charity that gets an annual donation of €4,666 from HSBC Bank Malta said yesterday that it pays the bank €55,000 in annual interest on a loan it took to support cancer patients receiving treatment in the UK.

The Puttinu Cares Children's Cancer Foundation, which took the loan a few months ago to buy three apartments in the UK to host Maltese families undergoing treatment, are being charged a subsidised commercial interest rate of 6.1 per cent.

This means that the interest on the 10-year loan of €896,000 reaches a grand total of €350,000 over the whole period, the foundation said in a statement it issued to clarify a number of issues raised by articles in other media. A series of questions was sent to HSBC yesterday to establish whether the 6.1 per cent interest rate was normal for such loans.

The bank, which operates the HSBC Cares for Children Fund, was also asked to explain how it donated money to Puttinu Cares on the one hand but then took €55,000 in annual interest on the other.

However, the questions remained unanswered and an HSBC spokesman said the bank was processing the questions through the legal department as there were issues of client confidentiality that had to be seen to.

Puttinu Cares said it had used the loan to buy all the furnishings of the three apartments in Sutton, which were officially inaugurated recently.

Certain media, it said, had confused the Puttinu Cares Children's Cancer Foundation, a totally independent non-governmental organisation, with the HSBC Cares for Children Fund.

"These are two completely different entities with different aims. It is also important to point out that neither HSBC nor the HSBC Cares for Children Fund had anything to do with the purchasing of the Sutton apartments. This venture was solely the initiative of Puttinu Cares and HSBC happens to be the bank that loaned us the money."

The loan was being paid through donations, the foundation said.