Office of the Prime Minister reacts to FIAU resignation story with massive non sequitur

Published: August 3, 2016 at 9:24am

The Office of the Prime Minister released a statement yesterday afternoon in reaction to my story about Manfred Galdes’s resignation as chief of the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, and more properly to the Nationalist Party’s demand for further information from the government.

“Mr Galdes resigned after accepting an offer from the private sector,” the OPM statement said. That is what is known as a non sequitur.

People who resign from their positions generally do tend to move into another position elsewhere if not they are not of retirement age. Mr Galdes is in his early 40s and has a young family.

It does not follow from this that they resigned because they wanted that other job. It’s the other way round: they move into the other job because they took a decision to resign.

The Office of the Prime Minister’s statement is even more offensive when you bear in mind that the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit has spent the last several months investigating the two men closest to the Prime Minister: his chief of staff and his de facto energy minister who he claims now has no portfolio.

Mr Galdes resigned shortly after the conclusion of those investigations and the refusal of the Police to proceed on the basis of the FIAU report. You can decide for yourselves whether that is a non sequitur or not.

Still more shameless is the Office of the Prime Minister’s reference to me (without a name, of course) in its statement as “those likely allies (the Nationalist Party) uses to hide behind”. So it is officially going down the Erdogan route of accusing journalists who are inconvenient to its purposes of being in league with its enemies.

Because, of course, I invented the fact that Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna are up to no good, by hacking the Mossack Fonseca servers and inserting fake emails and fake official documents through a miraculous process.

These people are so corrupt they believe in their own innocence.

Not The Village People - but almost.

Not The Village People – but almost.