Police Commissioner watches football in Milan while one of those he is meant to be investigating is out to lunch in Mdina

We popped in to a restaurant in Mdina for a very late Saturday lunch – around three o’clock – and who did I spot immediately but corrupt accountant Brian Tonna, sitting there with his girlfriend and the remains of their lunch.

I was annoyed enough already having had to report on this website that the Commissioner of Police and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff had both flown out of the country in the morning, when everybody is talking about why nobody is being investigated or prosecuted, and the press are in what passes for a frenzy on this island, asking the same questions.

The Commissioner is in Milan watching his favourite football team play, and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff is in Switzerland for a couple of days with his wife. Give them the benefit of the doubt – maybe they went to take a look at the carnival celebrations in Zurich, and not to move money around or add her as a signatory on a bank account (or make her the sole signatory).

Now this was just too much – seeing one of the accountants who fixed it all up for them, and who is supposed to be under police investigation with a view to prosecution – casually sitting at a restaurant table in his exercise pants and running shoes, with some gullible girl his daughter’s age (run, honey, and run fast), drinking his wine and taking time out from setting up money-laundering networks for PEPs and the (ex) managing director of a newspaper, while the Prime Minister for whose mates he fixed it protects him from police action.

I thought the least I could do was remind him that not everybody thinks that it is normal for crooks like him to run around in public instead of rattling the bars of a cell for a couple of years. And given that I couldn’t confront him with questions because we were on private premises, I chose a table directly opposite, sat facing them, brought out my phone and openly took some photographs. I’m not one to do things secretly.

He was utterly furious, clenched jaw, poisoned-rat’s eyes (and believe me, I’ve seen a lot of poisoned rats, living where I do) and all, but she put a brave face on it, gamely turned and tried to smile and wave. “That’s right, honey,” I said. “Smile, because your boyfriend should be in prison but he’s not.”

Then I put down my phone and ate my mussels, and they gathered up their things, paid the bill and left, he putting on a very large pair of black shades before he went out, making him look even more like the mobster he is.