No, Prime Minister: it’s not all right and my bank account is still frozen

The Prime Minister told journalists who challenged him about the matter this morning, that we can stop talking about the freezing of my bank account because:

“In the case of Minister Cardona and Mrs Caruana Galizia, I believe the situation is that the garnishee order is absorbed through the crowd funding, the funds have been gathered.” – The Malta Independent

Another newspaper quoted him as saying that the matter has been sorted because the money has been deposited in court and my bank account is no longer frozen.

Absolute rubbish: my bank account is still as frozen as one of his mate Putin’s Siberian prisons and I am living off cash hand-outs from family members.

The money has not been deposited in court because the transfer from the crowd-funding site has a standard delay of several days. Meanwhile, last Monday my lawyer mounted a challenge to the precautionary warrants, the Minister for the Economy and his EU presidency policy aide have been formally served at the Ministry for the Economy with formal notice of that, and we have been summoned to court to be heard out on this matter in a week’s time.

One of the grounds for revocation of a precautionary warrant is malicious intent – and Minister Cardona walked right into that one by spreading himself all over town talking about how he only did it to because he can’t stand my guts and will not be doing it to anyone else. The official ministerial statement, released through the government’s Department of Information, was particularly specific in this regard and has been appended to my formal application to the courts.

The crowd-funded money is to be transferred to a bank account administered by lawyers who are not my legal advisers from where it will be deposited in court pending a ruling on the revocation of the precautionary warrants.

Meanwhile, I wish to publicly thank the many lawyers who came forward to offer their advice.

The Prime Minister’s remarks to the press today were fatuous, implying that what his sordid cabinet minister did is of no importance now because 1,250 people stepped in to save the day (so that’s all right, then) – and this means he needn’t order his minister to withdraw the warrants.

But as Cardona told Reno Bugeja of TVM’s Dissett, when Bugeja asked him whether he had the Prime Minister’s approval or permission for doing it: “I don’t need the permission and approval of the Prime Minister.”