PANAMAGATE: This is how it started – with two posts in the afternoon of 22nd February
In the afternoon of 22nd February, I uploaded two posts in quick succession (see below). They would have seemed mysterious to everyone but four people: Joseph Muscat, Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi and Brian Tonna of Nexia BT. It’s unlikely that Sai Mizzi Liang, in Shanghai and clearly having already left Malta behind, would have bothered reading them.
Some of my readers might even have thought that I was having a bad hair day, so to speak, as the posts seemed inexplicable. But they were not aimed at my readers. They were aimed at that audience of just four people. I wanted to see what they would do next.
The following day, Konrad Mizzi approached Malta Today and gave the news portal a story in which he said he will “reveal” his ownership of a trust in New Zealand. He did not tell them that the only reason the trust exists is to further conceal the existence and ownership of a company in EU-blacklisted and top-secret Panama. Nor did he tell them that he set up this structure concurrently with the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, who has exactly the same set-up besides companies (plural) in another secretive offshore haven, the British Virgin Islands.
Malta Today then published its story early the day after, on the 24th. On reading it, I immediately reported that Konrad Mizzi owns a company in Panama, and that he lied to Malta Today by concealing key information from them.
Late in the evening on the 29th (Saturday) I watched Konrad Mizzi lying even further in the TVM news bulletin that had omitted to cover, in any way, the story everyone was talking about. I also heard that he had given “exclusive” interviews to all three English-language Sunday newspapers, The Sunday Times, The Malta Independent on Sunday and Malta Today, not letting them know that the others had the “exclusive” too. I discovered that he had still failed to mention that he did this together with the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, so at 9.30pm I uploaded the news on this website: Keith Schembri, too, has a Panama in company sheltered by a trust in New Zealand whose sole purpose is to contain the Panama company, and they set them up in concert, using Brian Tonna of Nexia BT for all the arrangements.
Sunday morning dawned and the Prime Minister headed off to a gathering at the Zejtun Labour Party club (which used to be run by Ramona Frendo’s mother), accompanied – totally inexplicably given the story that had just broken – by Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi. The press laid siege to Schembri who brushed them off and refused to admit to ownership of his Panama company or give any further details, because unlike Mizzi he is a shark.
After that Sunday morning appearance, Schembri and Muscat disappeared from public view – and have still not appeared – leaving Konrad Mizzi to take the fire alone.
