Luciano Busuttil says about Mizzi’s and Schembri’s activities: “It’s not illegal, so what’s wrong?”

I listened to a chunk of David Thake’s radio show in the car this afternoon. And I got the bit where he rang Labour MP Luciano Busuttil (not the sharpest knife in the drawer) for comment about how he feels being tarnished with the same parliamentary brush as Konrad Mizzi (and Keith Schembri).

First he told Thake that he was at the office and couldn’t speak. Then when Thake said he would only take a couple of minutes of his time and said the above, Busuttil retorted “Dak int qieghed tghidu” – i.e. ‘you are the one saying that’, in other words, that’s your take on things. It’s the typical Maltese cabbage retort, and I can’t stand it. Imagine answering any question that way, let alone when you sit in parliament as a representative of the people.

Thake pressed home on the point, and the line suddenly and mysteriously went dead. Some time later, he said that he had received a message saying Busuttil was trying to ring back, so Thake rang him. By this time, Busuttil was out of the office and in his car, on speaker-phone. And he had had time to think about what he was going to say. And this time, there was no stopping him. Thake couldn’t get a word in. But the upshot of it all was this:

“Hemm xi haga illegali? Hu illegali li tiftah kumpannija l-Panama jew il-British Virgin Islands? Allura what’s wrong? There’s nothing wrong.”

No, it’s not illegal to set up offshore companies. The companies themselves are not illegal. It’s what they’re used for that might well be illegal, and when you are a cabinet minister and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, there is nothing LEGAL you can do with secret offshore companies.

“They are using them for business transactions,” Luciano Busuttil said on air, for all the world as though it is normal for the Energy Minister and Prime Minister’s chief of staff to have “business transactions”.

David Thake said before he rang him that he wanted to hear what Busuttil has to say because he doesn’t strike him as a corrupt person. I think the real reason is that Busuttil is the only one who answers the phone and talks, because he has that dangerous combination of stupidity and arrogance. As for him not being corrupt, only a corrupt mind reasons like that.