The Finance Minister is disingenuous on the matter of trusts

Watch the video in this link. The Finance Minister talks about how trusts are legitimate and how European Commissioners use them to hold their assets.

This is completely disingenuous. I chose that word because I don’t particularly wish to accuse the Finance Minister of seeking deliberately to mislead. The trusts used by European commissioners and several cabinet ministers in Europe are called ‘blind trusts’. People with considerable assets and/or businesses, who are in political positions of decision-making power – like the aforementioned European Commissioners and cabinet ministers – place their holdings, particularly business shares, in blind trusts for the duration of their term in office IN THE INTERESTS OF PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY, which is precisely the opposite of what Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri sought to do. They sought total secrecy and concealment.

There is another point. Blind trusts – which is what Edward Scicluna was talking about – are not set up to receive money. They are set up to contain already existing cash of a portfolio of investments (shares, bonds, stocks, whatever) and managed by the trustees – with the trust assets sold and replacement stocks bought – in such a way that the politician is supposed to have no idea which shares are owned or not by his trust. This is to make sure that when a politician makes a policy decision, he does not do so in ways that benefit his own holdings.

As I said – completely the opposite of what Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi (and quite frankly, probably also Joseph Muscat given the way he is defending them) planned to do.

The Finance Minister is completely wrong in seeking to give the impression that Konrad Mizzi’s and Keith Schembri’s New Zealand trusts are in any way comparable to the blind trusts set up by European politicians FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF TRANSPARENCY AND PROTECTING THE PUBLIC INTEREST.

It was also disingenuous of the Finance Minister to avoid the subject of companies in Panama and talk only about trusts, when the real issue here is the companies in Panama. The trust is simply a holding (and hiding) vehicle for the Panamanian companies which will be invoicing for commissions.