Muscat ignores FIAU report and pretends to rely on PANA Committee instead

The Prime Minister went on a jaunt to Enemalta today, and took the press and Konrad Mizzi with him. The Malta Independent reports:

Asked why he was adamant on keeping Konrad Mizzi by his side, even after the PANA visit, Dr Muscat pointed out that the EP committee had declared that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the no-portfolio minister. The PANA committee had also said that Dr Mizzi gave a clear explanation.

Dr Muscat said he would not rely on comments by individual committee members but would wait for the conclusions reached by the committee. Asked if the case was now closed, Dr Muscat said the electorate would have the final say on that.

Aside from the fact that both the chairman and the deputy chairman of the European Parliament’s PANA Committee couldn’t be clearer about what they think of Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri – see here and here, and also here – Muscat shouldn’t be allowed to get away with using the PANA Committee as some kind of twisted excuse.

That the PANA Committee finds nothing wrong is a complete and utter lie – they are clear on the matter that both Schembri and Mizzi should resign – but even if they were not the case, the fact remains that Malta’s own Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit found many things wrong enough to warrant the prosecution of both of them, and made precisely that request to Police Commissioner Michael Cassar.

The only question journalists should be asking is why the Prime Minister is protecting Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri from prosecution in exactly the same way he protected John Dalli – the main difference here being that he did not have to dislodge the Police Commissioner to have him replaced with somebody more compliant because this time the Police Commissioner very helpfully resigned of his own free will, citing ‘health reasons’, only to fetch up a few weeks later at the Malta Security Services, as a ‘consultant’.

He will, of course, tell journalists that he did not tell the police not to prosecute Dalli, but that would be a very technical answer. Because one of his cabinet ministers gave that precise instruction, and if it was given without the Prime Minister’s knowledge, then that would have to have been a massive problem of insubordination for the Prime Minister, wouldn’t you say?

I know which cabinet minister gave the instruction, but I am not at liberty to say.