All our politicians need to read this, on both sides of the House

This morning I messaged Silvio Debono’s public relations and communications aide, Lou Bondi, as under.

Good morning. In 2008/2009, your client Silvio Debono gave Christoforos Tornaritis, a Cypriot who made cigarettes in Cyprus under the Raquel brand, almost a quarter of a million euros in cash and bank drafts for the purchase of a number of container-loads of cigarettes.

For this purpose, he travelled to Cyprus with a certain Jack Farrugia, whose home was searched by the police during a smuggling investigation in 2000.

Tornaritis appears to have taken the money but did not give the cigarettes in return, and your client made several trips to Cyprus to regain his cash or get the cigarettes. My question is this: what was your client planning to do with the cigarettes, and what is the extent and nature of his involvement in this trade?

Twenty minutes later, he messaged back:

Once again, you got it wrong. Verbatim, please.

That was a hopelessly inadequate reply if ever I saw one, so I messaged back again.

You’ll have to be a lot more specific than that because the facts are indisputable and my question is about the motivation.

He hasn’t messaged back yet, but I’ll keep you posted. They’re probably having a confab to work out how I know and what exactly I know, before talking to their lawyers.

Silvio Debono with his new car

Christoforos Tornaritis