Journalists should stand together in the face of this all-pervasive, escalating evil – and help fight it

The corrupt Minister of Health & Energy, Konrad Mizzi, whose money-laundering plans for graft and kickbacks (described in his legal advisers’ documents as “management consultancy and brokerage”) were thwarted by the most massive data leak in history, has hit Jacob Borg of the Times of Malta with a law suit designed to threaten, intimidate and silence.

The minister’s motives, in this as in much else, are dishonest. A simple statement of clarification would have sufficed. His intention is to get back at one of the few reporters who doorsteps him determinedly with a mike and awkward questions. Only yesterday, Jacob Borg and Mario Frendo (of the Nationalist Party media) were the only two reporters outside parliament who didn’t stand back like patsies and instead chased after Konrad Mizzi with cameras, mikes and recorders.

Jacob Borg asked him why he is now into management consultancy and brokerage, and why he tried to set up bank accounts in Dubai and Panama (Frendo persisted on the second question too).

Jacob Borg is also the journalist who, together with his colleague Caroline Muscat, broke the story of how prisoners are exploited by the Prime Minister’s wife and her dressmaker in a prison sweatshop. He is the one (he was off camera, but I recognised his voice) to whom Mrs Muscat addressed her sarcastic and condescending remark, “If you follow the media, I was on holiday, my dear” and to whom she then proceeded to be exceedingly hostile and aggressive.

Journalists should stand together in the face of this all-pervasive, escalating evil and fight it. Our country is once again descending into a Third World abyss. No, Konrad Mizzi’s Panama company is not linked to corruption. It is corruption itself.

Facebook message posted by Kurt Sansone, a journalist with the Times of Malta.