How would you audit bank accounts abroad of which you have knowledge about? Hmm.

Audited? To audit something you need to know about it beforehand. How can you audit a bank account held in the Cayman Islands.

The solution is to have minister’s declarations closely audited and investigated, and not to remove them altogether.

Far from paying you interest, some banks actually charge you for holding your money, while others pay negligible interest. On a huge amount, even negligible interest accumulates, but Lm200,000 can in no way be described as a huge amount for that purpose.

You are confusing Michael Falzon’s and Ninu Zammit’s accounts, which were straightforward ‘holding’ accounts for the parking of money, with Austin Gatt’s, which you can see – from the description he gave – was a managed account in which the money was actually invested.

This distinction is important. Unless Maltese people in general understand that a Swiss bank deposit account is not an investment vehicle but a place to park money and hold it in a non-or-low-interest-earning situation or even at a cost to the owner, they will never understand the gravity of what Michael Falzon and Ninu Zammit did.

They were prepared to leave a very large capital sum dead for decades and not working for them because they were too afraid to reveal it to the taxman and to their political bosses. That raises all kinds of questions.