Get ready for a convoy of John Dallis

The government’s new code of ethics may allow cabinet ministers to keep their private practice, The Malta Independent reports.

The way is wide open for corruption – make that even more corruption.

Let’s take John Dalli as an example. On paper, he did not keep his private practice, but in reality, he did.

He put everything in the names of his daughters Claire Gauci Borda and Louisa Dalli and used his position as cabinet minister to develop business, network, and scout for business opportunities.

Nobody could ever produce an invoice to prove that he was doing all this, because anything he did was billed by and paid to “his daughters’ companies”.

Most of us remember that he was made to resign his post as foreign minister in 2004 because he was buying tickets for ministerial travel “from his daughter’s travel agency”. But he wasn’t. It was worse than that: he was buying them from his own travel agency, fronted by his daughter on paper and at the companies registry.

When he was eventually made European Commissioner, he simply carried on – and because the European Commission takes a far dimmer view of these matters, the rest is history.