Now where would a cabinet minister on a salary have got a Eur500 bank note?
Chris Cardona, Minister for the Economy, has somehow got himself a Eur500 bank note. How he got it is anybody’s guess, given that he is not permitted to do private work, ministers do not receive their salaries in bank notes, still less of that denomination, and you won’t get Eur500 notes from any ATM or from the banker teller when making a withdrawal.
However he got it, he found a cheap way of breaking it up. Cardona went down to one of my local garden centres at closing-time today, picked up Eur25 worth of plants, took them to the till and handed the Eur500 note over. It was so obvious he did it just to break up the note, otherwise he would have used a credit or debit card.
Now picture the scene. It’s closing time. A cabinet minister gives you a Eur500 note and expects Eur475 change. You feel you can’t refuse and worse, you feel you can’t pass the note through the usual mandatory security check.
Really stylish behaviour for a cabinet minister, I must say. But then what would you expect of somebody who thinks that lap-dancing is the height of entertainment.
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€500 notes? Manwel Mallia has one thousand of them stashed away under his mattress.
Spot on!
But if he’s sleeping on that mattress there’s no way you can take them away, as long as you don’t get a crane to move him
Manuel Mallia might have given him one as a tip.
So maybe Manwel is giving them away.
What the big deal? We’re a nation of crooks, and we got a government of crooks.
Maybe he went into lap dancing himself and some horny blonde bimbo put the note in his G-string.
put the note
When presented with a Euro 500 note for a Euro 25 purchase, the shop owner was expected to reply “U issa halliehom, Ministru, hudhom on the house.”
The shop owner missed the cue, or was clever enough to see through it.
The correct thing to do in such a situation is for the shop owner to hand out the change in coins.
On the other hand, Joseph Muscat might have arranged to pay his ministers the hames mitt euro fil-gimgha zieda in cash, hence the note in question.
Lap-dancing clubs are very profitable these days.
Do they accept euro 500 notes?
At some of them, you can just swipe your credit card.
Last year I sold an old piece of furniture, belonging to my mother, at an antiques shop. The owner of the shop gave me a 500 Euro bank note for it. On the way back to my mother I stopped at a supermarket to buy her the usual groceries, using the same bank note. So for some time I had a 500 Euro bank note on me and I’m on a salary. Easy.
[Daphne – You shouldn’t have accepted it. Sources of Eur500 notes can be suspect, especially if you’re getting it from somewhere like that. Which is just my point. The antiques dealer may well have been looking to offload it – or a stack of them. Eur500 notes are the currency of criminal activity.]
Shut up daphne. Ara vera ma tiflahx tkun ridokola u ma ghandekx xtamel. Dan kollu fuq 500 euro note.
U kemm aw cwiec aw. Qisek tiehu gost kuhadd jaqbel mieghek. Ma tarax post wahda tikkritikak. Maybe you’re too snobbish to accept them.
Dan kollu fuq arlogg tal-lira, Daphne.
Forsi tathielu in-nanna ghal-grizma.
I have never seen a 500 euro note. Usually the people who have these large notes get them through some illegal activity. Going to a bank with a suitcase full of 500 euros notes can raise many eyebrows.
Wikipedia:
The value of the note is several times greater than many of the largest circulating notes of other major currencies, such as the United States 100 Dollar bill.[18] Thus a large monetary value can be concentrated into a small volume of notes. This facilitates crimes that deal in cash, including money laundering, drug dealing and tax evasion.
$100 bills are looked at with a wary eye – lots of places in the US won’t take these bills (prefer credit cards).
Can someone display one to see what it looks like in case I come close to one. I’ve never seen a Eur500 note, let alone used one to buy Eur25 worth of plants.
I have never see one, but I have seen this instead:
http://www.boxerfantaisie.fr/Shorty-500-Euros-boxer-femme-cbhaaajPa.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EUR_500_obverse_(2002_issue).jpg
Thank God for your blog, Daphne. And thank God that it’s so popular, helping the word spread so fast. You make independent media look amateur.
He must have sold some property. Oh wait.That excuse already blew up in Manwel Mallia’s face.
Maybe somebody tucked it into his G-string at a lapdancing club.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-07-28/news/mintoffs-delimara-home-on-the-market-2182905864/
I bet Anton Refalo won’t be interested in the contents of this house.
Mismatched pyrex plates and classroom chairs.
So the Mintoffs got Lm140,000 extra and kept the house. What a joke. And what are the chances that the property was built on public land in the first place?
Meanwhile, will Anglu Farrugia kindly tell us what he thinks of the following promise made to Dr. Grech who seems to be back at the Gozo Channel?
“Gozo Channel employees said that Dr Grech told them he has been promised the job (as consultant in charge of the company) by the Prime Minister himself.” (The Malta Independent on Sunday)
And when the mike’s put to Joseph, ‘Jien mhux hekk smajtu jghid’.
A prominent journalist confirmed they just can’t keep up with the stories.
Why does Gozo Channel need a consultant? And a consultant who’s a lawyer? I know Joe Grech annd he has no experience of anything remotely maritime.
http://www.maltarightnow.com/?module=news&at=Jitwaqqaf+il%2DPark+tal%2DIlma+f%E2%80%99Marsaskala&t=a&aid=99849364&cid=19
Leo Killjoy Brincat.
The sequence; animals in horrific conditions, Qawra water park remains closed, Marsascala park closed, reports to ‘toxic’ fumes, slump in business in the area, water park proposed for Marsascala shelved.
Labour, if anyone thought they don’t do it on purpose, think again.
They’re stopping all projects, no doubt a waste of money time and resources. If this is what he meant by ensuring a return, he’s got land reclamation right.
http://www.maltarightnow.com/Default.asp?module=news&at=Konfermi+li+qed+jonqos+il%2Dbejg%26%23295%3B&t=a&aid=99849363&cid=24
Imports down by 20%
Local production for internal consumption down by 9%
Inflation registered last month at 7.2%
Industrial exports down by 13%
Must be Muscat’s cunning plan to combat illegal immigration.
I remember the Bahamas landlord mentioned Mary Swan and the Dalli’s receiving funds in 500 Euro notes and it was a problem to exchange them in Bahamas.
Mary Swan, in her incarnation as Nina Petros, was involved in (let’s not say “masterminded”) international money laundering operations involving war criminals.
And now she’s hanging out with our de facto health minister because he’s such a brilliant accountant and international business man that he’s giving free advice to charity.
oqghodu hemm ja nies imdejjqin.ma tistghux tnizzluha li l-labour fil-gvern imma baqghalkom bl’ughih ta zaqq ta ghax s’issa joseph muscat ghamel izjed milli ghamel dak id-dizastru ta gozipn li kissrilkom partit.u l-kbir ghadu gej.viva l-labour