TODAY: Crooked John Dalli tarnishes Malta’s reputation round the world in The New York Times

That crook John Dalli and the way he and his daughters, in league with a notorious American fraudster known as Lady Bird, cheated several American pensioners out of their life savings, is today the subject of a big story in The New York Times. And the focus of the story is not just how Dalli cheated those elderly people, but also about how the police in Malta are refusing to cooperate by going after him.

Police Commissioner John Rizzo was planning to arrest and interrogate Dalli on his return to Malta from Brussels – he had done so already before his departure, holding him in a cell – and to arraign him on fraud charges in connection with the snus tobacco bribery case.

But when Joseph Muscat was elected prime minister, the first thing he did was sack Rizzo from the post and replace him with the compliant Peter Paul Zammit, who was not even a police officer at the time but legal procurator.

And the first thing Zammit did in his new post was declare that he did not have a case against Dalli. Dalli then held a mass of thanksgiving which was said by his brother the priest, and Prime Minister Muscat appointed him his consultant on public hospitals. We have since discovered the result of that.