Dan il-gvern huwa sejf ghal “business.”

The police will never do such a thing, not under Labour, anyway.

I am under the impression that this person is somehow ‘protected’ by the PL or by some of its cronies. Maybe some of that bundle of millions ended up in the PL’s coffers.

Who knows.

Daphne is right on this one too, I’m afraid. A legit businessman does not simply fall into the mob’s hands.

The only motivation for this would be super profits, which would imply that legitimacy flies out of the window at the word ‘go’. Thus not a legitimate businessman to be seen here.

Secondly, a father, a conscientious father, a father who truly loves his children because he has worried about them at different stages of their development and about their future (even in very normal circumstances), does not let such things happen by mistake. (I’m referring to the Facebook profile photo here.)

Yes, one may say that ignorance or naivity may play a part in certain cases of Facebook or social media interaction.

But to defraud so many people, most of whom are career business people and shrewd to say the least, to the tune of the millions mentioned here, the person in question is surely not ignorant or naive, but criminal actually.

I hope you understand now.

Dickens, your analysis is spot on.

This leads to a second question – why would a person invest money with someone who is not authorised to do so in terms of a licence and is not even regulated?

Finally The Times need to make a distinction between MFSA and the registry of companies – the latter is housed in the same premises but they are nonetheless independent – (one is a regulator and regulates licensed entities, the other is a registry). Every company is obliged to file its audited accounts with the registry and not with MFSA.

[Daphne – You do not need a licence or MFSA scrutiny to seek out and obtain investment in your own business. If you need a certain amount of money to develop your business and can’t get it from the banks, you are perfectly and legally entitled to seek it elsewhere. Then the terms of agreement are up to you and your investor. His crime is not in obtaining money from third parties, but in obtaining it under false pretences and breaching the conditions of the agreement.]

I know a really nice, honest, hardworking young man who was devastated when the father that he idolized ended up convicted and jailed for fraud, which nobody in the family had known about.

I am not sorry for the criminals. Let them get what they richly deserve, and their partners too, who more often then not are quite happy to look the other way when the illicit money rolls in. But I am sorry for the children, old or young, who are usually blameless.

[Daphne – 1. I knew more than a few things about financial crimes. 2. Most criminals also have a legitimate business, either to launder money, or to use as a front, or because that is how they started out before discovering they could also do crime. 3. ‘The mob’ cannot coerce a legitimate businessman who is on the straight and narrow into laundering money, importing drugs or smuggling diesel; for coercion to be possible, he would have to be involved in criminal activity of some sort already; 4. Facebook is full of proud fathers, but you won’t find many who use their young son’s photograph as a Timeline picture, let alone when they are involved in criminal activity and their son is an obvious target; 5. his most recent comments on Facebook are just before he packed up and left and concurrent with when he was under threat, and after he had already vanished for a few weeks but returned, saying that he had been in trouble.]

Sarah Palin’s daughter is involved in a brawl and we get to hear about it here, across a whole ocean and a continent.

Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, former MP and current Chairman of the Malta Institute of Science and Technology, also gets involved in a brawl, but we’re expected to turn a blind eye.