MUST-WATCH VIDEO/Prime Minister refuses to answer questions about Konrad Mizzi’s shady dealings

The Prime Minister this morning refused to answer questions about his chief minister’s highly suspect ownership of a company in Panama and a trust in New Zealand set up to hold that company.

Exhibiting visible discomfort, awkwardness and embarrassment, he evaded questions and tried to change the subject. He brought in Austin Gatt and his entirely legitimate and fully documented inheritance from his father, but conspicuously failed to mention Michael Falzon of the Malta Developers Association and Ninu Zammit, both of whom hid conspicuous amounts of money in Switzerland while they were cabinet ministers, only to be discovered many years later, after they had repatriated the money through a (Labour) government amnesty.

The Prime Minister tried to hoodwink listeners into believing that the Opposition leader has a trust the equivalent of Konrad Mizzi’s, when he is nothing but a trustee for others in his previous professional capacity as a lawyer, a function many lawyers perform in Malta’s financial services sector.

And then, unable to resist, towards the end when he is under the heaviest pressure, he calls me a “hate blogger” – of course without mentioning my name in the Grand Old Tradition of the Labour Party and its fellow travellers – and accuses me and others of trying to undermine his anointed one’s election as deputy leader of the Labour Party.

This for all the world as though I invented the facts about the New Zealand trust and the Panama company, and in his panic under pressure forgetting that it was Mizzi himself who gave (part of) the story himself to Malta Today at his own request – after he realised that I had rumbled him, when I uploaded a photograph of New Zealand lamb and another one of a Panama hat some days ago. He walked right into it and disclosed (part of) the information himself.

You have to watch this video and then watch it again. That young reporter with the spectacles (Mario Frendo) is really good. While all the others hang back almost in embarrassment, failing to ask the right questions and hammer them home, he goes after the Prime Minister and won’t let go. Terrific job, and especially so for somebody so young.