This is Mario Camilleri, to whom Joseph Muscat gave 4.2 million euros of public money

Published: March 1, 2015 at 11:14pm

Mario Camilleri 6

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Mario Camilleri 1

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I hadn’t a clue who he was – didn’t recognise him at all – until I saw the oldest of these photographs. Then I had instant recall of a squarish spiv type with a big red face trying to impress me at parties around 15 years ago with his latest acquisitions while using chat-up lines straight out of Austin Powers and pretending he wasn’t married.

So I was sort of surprised (perhaps not) to find that he is a Knight of Magistral Grace in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. He organises trips to Lourdes, presumably while striking corrupt deals with politicians. But then don’t John and Bastjan Dalli go to Lourdes? It must be the fashion for sleazebags and crooks.

Camilleri is a director of the lotteries company Maltco, and the owner – along with his wife Mary and occasionally his children – of the companies Marcam Ltd, M & A Investments Ltd, Consultancy and Services (International) Holdings Ltd, and Jamco Ltd.

His identity card details are: 737254M, Mario George Camilleri, ‘Aurora’, 64 Godwin Ganado Street, Tal-Virtu, Rabat.

His favourite impress-the-ladies spiel back then, as I recall, was that he bought and sold London hotels for a living. Perhaps he does, I wouldn’t know. But then you’d imagine he’d have paid his greengrocer’s bill, even if it does amount to Eur36,000. All fur coat and no knickers, as they say.

The caricature of the Maltese spiv is not so far off the mark in reality. The amazing thing is that spivs are given so much credence in this country, where as long as people have money and throw it around, nobody questions its source. It’s the Pound Shop version of the Jay Gatsby fable.