It’s not about money or tax audits. This is about criminal intent.

All the Prime Minister’s talk about international tax audits has been washed down the river, not that it made sense at the outset.

This is not about existing money or tax audits. This is about criminal intent. Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri set up, in total secrecy, companies in Panama and later transferred them to secret trusts in New Zealand.

They attempted to open accounts for their Panama companies and/or New Zealand trusts at banks in Dubai and Panama. Those two banks wouldn’t touch them because they are the health and energy minister of a European Union member state and the chief of staff to the prime minister of a European Union member state. And to make things more suspicious still – to the banks – they were acting in tandem.

Mossack Fonseca gave the nature of business of the minister’s and the PM’s chief of staff’s Panama companies as “management consultancy and brokerage”.

It couldn’t be more obvious what the (criminal) intention was if it was spelled out in large pink neon letters with whirring trumpet sounds.

Their plans were foiled because they couldn’t get a bank account and while they were still trying, they were busted by ‘the media’.

And they may well not have been foiled at all, because the fact that the banks did not permit them to open accounts because they are PEPs does not mean they didn’t open accounts in somebody else’s name or borrow, say, John Dalli’s or similar.

It is also getting very difficult to avoid the strong suspicion that the Prime Minister is involved and that is why he was not shocked (except shocked that they were rumbled), did not even talk about resignations (this emerged in an interview Konrad Mizzi gave to Malta Today) and is now defending his men like the third member of the Triad.

Keith Schembri already had a secret company in the British Virgin Islands. He did not need another one in Panama through which to funnel his backhanders, graft and kickbacks. His Panama company may well be Muscat’s. If one of those two is a front for Muscat, it’s more likely to be Schembri for this reason, and for another one too: the ultimate beneficiary of Keith Schembri’s trust is Keith Schembri himself. But the ultimate beneficiary of the Mizzi trust is Mrs Mizzi and her children. When you’re creating a front, you don’t involve some stranger’s minor children. Not only is it entirely pointless, but when they turn 18 or 21 or whatever, they might well prove to be totally uncooperative.

Keith Schembri, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff