And in Malta, you get the feeling that MPs on both sides of the house are scared to ask
Published:
February 11, 2015 at 11:38pm
In the UK, the Swiss Leaks affair has already come before the House Public Accounts Committee, less than three days after the story broke late on Sunday night.
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http://www.bbc.com/news/business-31425084
Heqq, ghax mhux illegali, heqq, mela mhux kullhadd irid jiekol, heqq?
Now go ahead and call me socialist.
HPB, Malta is a society of “u iva” :
U iva, billi nisraq id-dawl – inkella kif tridni nzomm il-business!
U iva, billi nibni post bla permess – imbghad jirrangali l-PM.
U iva, billi nxahham pulizija – inkella fejn ha jipprakjaw il-klijenti!
U iva billi naghlqu t-toroq ghal gimghatejn u naharqu n-nar il-gurnata kollha ghal gimghat – m’ghandniex dritt niehdu ftit pjacir tal-festa?
U iva, billi nahdem u immur nirregistra bil-BMW – inkella kif tridni nzommu il-villa u s-sefturi.
U iva, tghaggibiex – jekk frankajt E100, 000 taxxa, mhux it-tfal ha jgawdu.
My main thrust there was the “u iva” but the “business über alles”, the Maltese credo since about the mid-90s. I don’t like it that we have a class of untouchables just because they have a lot of money. That’s all.
U iva, billi ma nghatix ircevuta tal-VAT. Nahdem bil-cash, mhux xorta.
Here there is no such thing as socialism, communism or nationalism. There is only egoism.
And in Malta Taghna Lkoll ?
Complete silence.
Ah, the UK – that is a different galaxy to ours. We can only dream now.
We were travelling in that direction for around 25 years maybe not at the speed of light but at least in the right direction. In two years we have managed to travel in the opposite direction and covered the distance we travelled in 25.
Lots of positive energy, lots.
Now we’re into trajectories in full blown “poetry.”
As long as the end word hits a familiar chord,
the rest of it doesn’t need to make any sense.
One man’s jackpot the other’s crackpot.
I suspect the names will traverse party lines and government and Opposition will be united in looking away.
You can bet your last drachma that the recent amnesty on undeclared investments had something to do with this. Some really big cats must have had an inkling, and of course, the Ministry of Finance complied.
Legislation and media have their links.
Eggshells build many pretty buildings in Malta.
“You should be aware of different options that exist to attenuate the economic effect of this tax,” said Colin Wyss, then chief operating officer of HSBC Private Bank (Suisse), and Denis Soussi, the bank’s head of tax, in a letter to clients in February 2005.”
……..
In December, a federal judge authorized the Internal Revenue Service to issue summonses to HSBC Bank USA and several package-courier services to identify U.S. taxpayers who “may be evading” federal taxes by using the offshore consulting firm of Sovereign Management & Legal Ltd, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. Some U.S. taxpayers may have used Sovereign to set up anonymous companies in Panama and elsewhere to “conceal their foreign assets,” federal prosecutors said.”
…….
FDI/ Finance Malta: Let’s all pretend we have nothing to do with this.
Who better than the designer of the law to exploit the loopholes?
Definition of cartels as applied to financial institutions and legislation fixing?
Probably Muscat will issue an amnesty to those Maltese nationals who are involved – ‘basta ma jitlifx il vot taghhom jahasra’.
Both sides are probably afraid of opening a can of worms.
This is a country where nobody has heard of the concept of “conflict of interest.”
And that’s why I lost confidence in all our MPs.
Our Tax Compliance Unit is busy chasing the small tax evaders. They should wake up to the big problem. They now have a list served on a silver platter.
ONE Maltese account holder’s name was published in a leading newspaper. We are not told whether the newspaper saw or was given the whole list of names or how it came to know of the one name.
The newspaper does include a declaration by the person’s lawyers regarding the account but the question why/how this particular name and not others was published remains.
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/search?country=MT&q=&ppl=on&ent=on&adr=on
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150209/local/tancred-tabone-listed-among-account-holders-as-authorities-investigate-data-showing-687m-in-swiss-bank.555428
[Daphne – The details of account holders are released ONLY by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists when there is a definite public-interest issue. Tancred Tabone’s name was not discovered by the media in Malta. It was released by the ICIJ and is available on its portal.]
Offshore Leaks was a separate ICIJ investigation based on another set of data from a different source.
Complete silence by all our government MPs. Smells fishy.
It really is fishy the culprits must be financing the parties.
To prove they’re clean politicians should insist on naming and shaming.
[Daphne – You shouldn’t conclude that they’re financing anyone at all. It is more likely that, because the accounts are secret, MPs on both sides of the house are uneasy about chasing information because of what they might find.]
Assuming there is nothing illegal, or even remotely immoral, MPs are scared shitless because fear it might give Malta a bad name mal-investitur barrani. And we come up against the massive Edifice of Righteousness that is il-Business. Ara ma mmorrux inwegghu xi businessman.
Newspapers abroad are publishing details, including names and amounts, of the Falciani/Lagarde lists. Why not here in our Malta newspapers and blogs?
[Daphne – Newspapers can only publish the details that are released by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which is releasing only those details where a case for the public interest can be successfully argued. The data of private individuals and of public persons who are not suspected of any illegitimate activity is protected from public release. So far, the only details released for Malta have been those of Tancred Tabone, because he is a former state corporation chairman who is facing trial for corruption, and so he would have been immediately identifiable as a public-interest case.]
Daphne – I assume that any politician on the confidential list would be regarded as a public-interest case and thus would have been exposed by the ICIJ. I make this assumption based on the premise that the primary reason for banking in Switzerland is tax avoidance. Please correct me if I’m labouring under some kind of misapprehension.
[Daphne – I wouldn’t know. I only know the answer journalists are being given when they ask for information.]
Money laundering too, I guess.
The so-called Lagarde list is known by that name because the French government had passed on the information about Greek citizens to the Greek government.
Lagarde was finance minister in France at the time, hence ‘Lagarde list’. Lagarde herself had nothing to do with releasing the information to the media.
I’m interested in the “so far.”
Does that mean that there may have been other reasons, for example, as to why HSBC got Mid Med?
Help yourselves to the full list here. You can open the file by using notepad/text editor and just search for ‘Malta’ and/or ‘Gozo’ to get the names/addresses of these people :
http://we.tl/zpt4CNFi9n
Apologies for the massive file, it’s 60mb worth of names/addresses from all over the world and I do not have the time to filter out the Maltese/Gozitan names for you so…happy reading!
(For DCG : Can’t risk putting my own e-mail, my apologies)
[Daphne – No need to be dramatic. That’s Offshore Leaks information which the ICIJ released almost two years ago, and which has been publicly available on the organisation’s site ever since. I’ve noticed that quite a few people here in Malta are confusing the two – Swiss Leaks – largely because the Offshore Leaks passed the Maltese press by in general and is being noticed here in Malta only now. Most of the names on that list are of financial intermediaries.]
ICIJ Offshore Leaks http://www.icij.org/offshore
ICIJ Offshore Leaks database https://offshoreleaks.icij.org