Well, the only Nationalist politician I know of who would have been capable of fixing something like that, because of his intimate connection with Mintoff and his influence with the judiciary, is dead. So we can’t ask him. Not that he would have said anyway. You’ve certainly got a point there. And I know for a fact that the architect commissioned as court expert over-assessed the value because he boasted about it in public.

You are correct in theory but I can imagine someone from OPM influencing a judge by telling him that government will not appeal if he awards the maximum. A horrible thought I know but everything is possible on this island. I always had a suspicion that the awarding of this strange sum was too coincidental with the events in the country. We will never know if this is pure fantasy in my head.

If Mintoff was rewarded for something, he was rewarded by whoever delivered that judgement.

The government’s complicity was then in not appealing against the judgement.