GUEST POST/Muscat has exposed himself to looking extremely bad, lying through his teeth

Sent in by Dire Straits:

There’s so much to this story that it’s hard to keep all the most important points in focus. Daphne’s posts, and this excellent one by ‘Bertrand Russell’ help a lot of course.

1. The following is the one point to remember at all times. Reason says it must be true, Daphne has been saying it all along, and three financial wizards I have spoken to have all confirmed it: there is absolutely no possible legitimate reason why a Maltese government minister with a declared income of 76,000 euros a year and the assets he has reported to parliament, should own a Panamanian-registered company. The only possible reason to do so is if he wants to hide money and real estate, and the provenance of that money and real estate.

2. Since Konrad Mizzi had a Panamanian-registered company precisely so that he could hide assets, he was clearly not going to disclose it to Parliament, and in fact he never did since its incorporation in 2013. He was forced to come forward only by Daphne’s posts. Now the only way he could avoid looking as if he only came forward because of Daphne’s posts was if someone authoritative said (weak as it sounds) that Mizzi had already told him about it, and that he had already planned to disclose it. Joseph Muscat conveniently gave him that get-out-of-jail-free card. But that is only because it gets him out of jail free, too.

3. Because Mizzi never intended to disclose his ownership of the company (which he owned so he would not have to disclose anything), then the alibi that Joseph Muscat gave him (that he had already given him a draft declaration of assets with the Panamanian company listed) could only be a lie.

4. Muscat has therefore exposed himself to looking extremely bad, lying through his teeth, and defending to the hilt a Minister who had tried to keep a very shady financial holding secret, only to have his cover blown fairly early on. Muscat has been quite ready to rid himself of people who could embarrass him – think Anglu Farrugia, or Michael Falzon, or even, at the very end, Manuel Mallia – but he has done the very opposite here. Given how closely he seems to work with the man who he has just changed the Party statute to promote to the deputy leadership, the suspicion has to be that he is complicit in all this.

Just one final consideration. A Minister doesn’t just have to be clean. He has to be seen to be clean at all times, without the shadow of doubt about his probity. Just the fact of owning a Panamanian-registered asset-holding vehicle makes a mockery of all this. Remember – he can tell us that the Panamanian company doesn’t have or never had any assets. But there is absolutely no way that this can be confirmed independently – the Panamanians would not even accept a foreign government, Court of Justice or police request for disclosure.

We have to take Konrad Mizzi’s and Joseph Muscat’s word for it. Many people will. But most are not that stupid.