While the government has the power to fire the police commissioner who has no security of tenure.

Theoretically Daphne is right, in practice the minister has the power to make as many as assistant commissioners and commissioners as it wants, and kick upstairs the commissioners who are an inconvenience to the government.

His way out was only to give in and ultimately resign – another of Labour’s tactics when someone is not accomodating to their requests.

Has the opposite theory occurred to you at all, Kevin – that it is those “other authorities” which conducted their investigations before the police did and the Commissioner who refused to cooperate? After all, the Finance Minister did let the cat out of the bag in parliament (rather stupidly, I thought, and certainly not in line with the law about not divulging information) when he said categorically that the Inland Revenue and the Financial Analysis Intelligence Unit are investigating the matter. The latter has very strong powers of investigation into money-laundering crimes, but then has no prosecution powers and needs the police. Suppose they investigated and then Michael Cassar refused to play ball and decided to go out on sick leave instead, followed by resignation? I think that is a very likely scenario.

A letter to the police does wonders: it opens a file. And nearly irrespective of who writes the letter, if the details are correct and verifiable there is the beginning of an investigation.

In this case, if the commissioner did not want to appear to be pro-actively pursuing the minister and the PM’s chief of staff, he could have tiptoed into an investigation through exploratory meetings with the financial authorities concerned, starting with whether Nexia BT’s position is tenable, given what’s been revealed about its operations, and preparing a preliminary report for discussion with the Attorney General, all the while making it impossible for the institutions concerned not to be roped into further expanding the investigation, with a magisterial inquiry running in parallel if necessary (roping in a magistrate is easy – whether he or she does the job is another matter).

Having said this, I think that when it comes to business-related, financial crimes, given the many grey areas resulting from all-encompassing draconian legislation, a pro-active police force is a dangerous thing to have. In some areas, let’s allow them to be nudged into action.