The Prime Minister, the Energy Minister and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff: corruption, kickbacks and money-laundering

The Prime Minister’s head of secretariat (‘chief of staff’) Keith Schembri and Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi, who is the Prime Minister’s most trusted minister and his anointed choice for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party, set up their Panama companies owned by New Zealand trusts in concert, while the negotiations with Azerbaijan were in full swing.

They were represented by the same accountant, together, at all times, and filed all their paperwork on the same dates. That is not something which you do for estate planning purposes. Given the particular positions of those two, and the fact that they acted in concert throughout the process, what you are looking at here is fraud, corruption, kickbacks and consequently, money-laundering in the transaction of business on behalf of the government and people of Malta.

The incontrovertible evidence – which has yet to emerge (but will) – means that they would be foolish to the point of reckless insanity to try to hold on to their positions.

It is impossible that these two men who are closest to the Prime Minister were acting without his knowledge and consent. It is also impossible that he would know about it and allow them to proceed unless he was also taking a cut, and given his dominant position, that would have to be the lion’s share. One of those two, or both, is holding it for him. I would say that here we have the explanation for why the Prime Minister keeps Konrad Mizzi so close, promotes him and changed the rules to force him onto the Labour Party as its deputy leader for party affairs.

Journalists need to wake up. The Labour Party needs to wake up before it heads for another terminal disaster. The decent chaps in the cabinet just can’t afford to be personally, professionally or politically compromised and embarrassed through association with shocking corruption of this nature, with such a grave betrayal of the public’s trust, by the people closest to the Prime Minister and, it follows from that, the Prime Minister himself.

Everybody is talking about this story and flooding into this website for updates. This is a story so huge that it makes John Dalli look like somebody who steals candy from babies. This is the Prime Minister we are talking about, his head of secretariat and his Energy Minister and party deputy leader – setting up companies in Panama to take bribes, kickbacks and dirty money from dictators and corrupt businessmen. Years of nagging suspicions that they’re up to no good and finally they’ve been caught.

Can they carry on as Prime Minister, Energy Minister and head of secretariat? Of course they can’t. They believe that a story this big, involving the prime minister of a European Union member state, his head of secretariat and his favourite minister can be contained within Malta. It can’t. At some point it’s going to break internationally when all the evidence is out, and until then they’re going to be like headless chickens, unable to run the country (not that they’ve bothered). And after that, they’re toast. So go now. Just go. Turn yourselves in to the police and let this country be normal again.

Read this article from April last year in the context of what we know now. You will also notice from the photographs below, taken during their visit in December 2014, Konrad Mizzi was not on the sightseeing tours and visits to museums and so on, even though he was at the official negotiating table.