The Mossack Fonseca Panama cafe is now open in Naxxar

Published: December 14, 2016 at 10:01am

Priorities, priorities – when you’re facing down terminal cancer, the best thing to do is to press on with your plans for that café you started, right? Or let your wife do it, so she can sell coffee along with mirrors and vases after you’ve kicked the bucket, and that’s assuming the Bank of Valletta doesn’t foreclose on your roughly €4 million in unsecured loans and overdrafts obtained with the Taghna Lkoll bank since you came to power, and the €13 million loans your main company has guaranteed for your other companies.

So the Prime Minister’s chief of staff and his wife (but mainly his wife, given the current scenario) have opened their Loft cafe in Naxxar as part of their Loft homewares and interior decoration shop. No problem with permits for those two, of course.

They have had some catering businesses before, and were shareholders in Sciaccia in Valletta before bailing out. But as criminals everywhere know, restaurants and cafes are the perfect money-laundering machines. You won’t find a Panama Pizza or a Mossack Fonseca goat’s-milk cheese salad on their menu, nor even a British Virgin cocktail – though you might some New Zealand lamb.

What a country.

Keith and Josette's Panama cafe

Keith and Josette’s Panama cafe