Keith Schembri, terminal cancer, and the wrong end of the stick

Trying hard to bring up the subject without actually mentioning the southern Mediterranean taboo C-word and fastidiously avoiding all discussion of the fact that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff is actually dying, the Nationalist Party reported in its newspaper this morning that James Piscopo will replace Keith Schembri as the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.

Piscopo, a former Air Malta employee, was the Labour Party’s chief executive officer and when it came to power in March 2013, he was appointed chairman of the Transport Authority.

I don’t know where Il-Mument got that story from, but the government immediately denied it, calling it ‘fake news’ (they have a new buzzword) while failing to deny – because they can’t – that Keith Schembri is fatally ill and not going in to the office.

The Nationalist Party was stupid to come out with that story, allowing the government to issue a statement of denial which the sort of people who only read headlines will now take to be a denial of the fact that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff has only been given some months left to live.

The people who take these sorts of decisions at the Nationalist Party should put aside once and for all their 1980s Father-Godwin-Preca-St-Aloysius-prayer-group mentality and start thinking straight. The story here is not whether Keith Schembri is going to be replaced as chief of staff or not. He is obviously NOT going to be replaced because what he does is mainly illegal or fraudulent, as a fixer, and that’s why he’s there as part of the triad. He is no more replaceable than Konrad Mizzi is.

The real story, the most pressing point from a public-interest perspective, is what the authorities plan to do about Schembri and his complicated tangle of secret offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands, Panama, Gibraltar and Cyprus (and those are just the ones revealed through the Panama Papers fall-out).

It is obvious that Schembri’s most pressing concern right now is sorting out that particular web, which he set up in the belief that he will live out a normal lifespan and not die within a few years. If he doesn’t do that, his wife and children will be left with the nightmare from hell as soon as he pops his clogs.

To make matters worse, over the last five years he’s been stripping his legitimate business in Malta – Kasco Group – of profits which are being funnelled by fraudulent invoicing to his secret offshore companies. Kasco is registering a loss every year or close to a loss, but owes the Maltese banks millions.

When Schembri dies with those loans still unpaid, the banks will immediately foreclose, leaving his heirs with nothing to live on in Malta because he short-sightedly hid everything overseas where they are now not going to be able to get it without the authorities swooping in.

So Schembri is going to be desperately making arrangements for his widow and possibly also his parents – his father has been holding his shares since March 2013 – to be able to use the hidden money without the Maltese authorities noticing or being able to find out. To this end, I am informed, he has given his power of attorney to the corrupt accountant, Brian Tonna of Nexia BT, who has a desk at the Office of the Prime Minister.

When I was told about this, my instant reaction was that he is mad to take that kind of risk, because with a power of attorney, secret companies of his own in the British Virgin Islands (and bank accounts to go with them), and no scruples at all, Tonna can clear Schembri out completely, with nobody being any the wiser.

Mrs Schembri will not be able to do anything about it because she has no idea what her husband has hidden and where (her name, unlike Sai Mizzi’s, is on nothing) and she will not be able to go to the police because the whole set-up was illegal to begin with.