Alfred Mifsud asks: “Why now?”

The refrain of Central Bank Governor-designate Alfred Mifsud’s defence in the Mid Med Bank software system cash-bribes story is “Why now, on the eve of my appointment as governor of the Central Bank of Malta?”

He is looking at it the wrong way round. It is precisely because the news was broken that he is going to be the next governor of the central bank of a European Union member state that people are coming forward with information that it would have been irresponsible of them to withhold.

Had Mifsud not been chosen by his former employee at Crystal Finance, the Prime Minister, for the controlling job at the Central Bank of Malta, it is more than likely that these sources would have said nothing.

There were the same imperatives to break the news of Konrad Mizzi’s secret operations in Panama and New Zealand before Labour Party delegates elected him party deputy leader. That they elected him all the same is a separate issue. It would have been completely irresponsible to let them go to the ballot box before information on his secret Panama company and New Zealand trust was reported.

The same situation applies here. Those who knew about the cash payments Mifsud took from a supplier to Mid Med Bank, and the money he received from tobacco giant Philip Morris International in his capacity as a close associate of the European Commissioner for Health, John Dalli, would have been totally irresponsible not to come forward with it before he becomes governor of the Central Bank of Malta.