Can you imagine a similar headline about Manuel Mallia?

Of course every country has corruption, and some more than others, but this is how countries outside the Third World deal with it. Malta is not among them.

This Portuguese minister was investigated by the police – while he was in the cabinet – for saying that certain foreigners had invested in Portugal more than they actually did invest, to justify his giving them a ‘golden visa’.

And our ministers are SELLING CITIZENSHIP – citizenship, not mere residence visas – in total secrecy.

We have no way of knowing how many people Manuel Mallia made Maltese citizens as he did his wife, perhaps in return for a small investment in his mattress (his wife’s investment in his mattress is of a different order), and the police are not about to investigate.

Journalists can’t get the information without a whistleblower coming forward, and the Opposition is hamstrung by the fact that so many people connected to it, directly or indirectly, are selling passports madly.

This country is really in a fix.