Statute of limitations on corruption

Published: January 20, 2013 at 12:29pm

Karmenu Vella, Il-Guy: and some people are voting Labour because we need a change. They need their heads examined. Nice change, bringing back the sleazy old fossils of the Mintoff era, and they’re at the forefront of the party now, not even in some backroom.

While Joseph Muscat is on the subject, perhaps some enterprising reporter who hasn’t frozen like a rabbit in car headlights, or who thinks that politics began in 2004, might consider asking him whether he intends to use his own law to investigate Karmenu Vella’s friends and associates for smuggling goods into Malta and keeping lists of people who were to be given priority for basic essentials like a television or a telephone line (or a job).

I won’t include Karmenu Il-Guy himself, because the man is innocent. When prosecuted back in the 1980s (as a cabinet minister, if you please – and we know what the courts were like then) after huge pressure from the Nationalist press, he said that he didn’t know boats were obliged at law to put in at Valletta Port Control when entering Maltese waters. He said he thought he could cruise in straight to the Tunny Net in Mellieha, from Sicily.

I was in my late teens at the time and even I knew that if you didn’t put in at Valletta Port Control, the army would come and get you and you would spend 48 hours in the police lock-up while plain clothes policemen went over your house and office without a search warrant.




16 Comments Comment

  1. Alfred Bugeja says:

    The real question is whether he will investigate il-Guy after he wins the election regarding the party financing campaign he’s been running for the past few months – the result of which we are all seeing in the huge number of billboards, banners, inserts and full-page ads in the most expensive newspapers which Labour is flooding us with.

    They are quite literally well on their way to buying this election.

    • maryanne says:

      Your last sentence proves that Labour’s proposals haven’t a leg to stand on. If they were ‘concrete’ proposals (as Joseph likes to repeat alot) they don’t need to splash out all this money on an election campaign.

      • Min Jaf says:

        The only concrete thing to come out of the MLP, for that is what the PL remains despite the smoke and mirrors manipulated by Joseph Muscat, is the solid wall that Malta’s finances will crash into should Muscat be elected to power.

  2. Qeghdin Sew says:

    This is a completely separate case. It does not in any way excuse the allegations of kickbacks over oil procurement.

  3. Tania says:

    The recommend button’s not working for this one.

  4. TROY says:

    Miskin il-Guy, ha zball u dahal fejn it-Tunny Net ghax hemm kienet qied tistennieh xbinthu.

    U wara li hu u Johnny Dalli rabtu il-boats taghhom mal-moll sar party kbir u dam sas-sieghat bikrin ta fil-ghodu.

    L-ghada bdew gejjin il-hbieb tal-hbieb, sabiex kullhadd jiehu sehmu.

    Ma kienx jaf miskin.

    Lestu ghal izjed min dawn il-hnizrijiet, hbieb.

  5. Village says:

    Min jaf kemm ser ikkissru kazini Nazzjonalisti jekk jirbhu l-elezzjoni.

  6. bystander says:

    I went to the lavatory this lunchtime and, feeling like it’s time I needed a change, decided to leave my trousers up instead of taking them down.

  7. bystander says:

    What about Dalli?

    About to be arraigned in Malta, finds himself falling ill in a Brussels hospital.

    WTF?

  8. drinu says:

    PLPN it doesn’t justify what we read today….

  9. AE says:

    Any idea what the maximum penalty is for a public officer being found guilty of corruption?

    Is it high enough?

    It isn’t enough to remove prescription.

  10. Min Weber says:

    Wait, wait, wait.

    He meant he did not know that even AS A MINISTER he had to go to the Valletta Port Control.

    That’s a huge difference, dear.

  11. Riya says:

    Min jaf min se jkun ix-xufier tal-Perit Vella jekk ikun Ministru? Tghid missier Julia Farrugia irtirat issa? Hemm xi iehor innocenti bhal Botom?

    Il-Perit Vella dejjem nies innocenti u serji kellu mieghu meta kien Ministru tal-Gvern Laburista.

    Forsi ghalekk Joseph Muscat dejjam jitfghu quddiem – ghax ma kienx korrott.

  12. S Borg says:

    Ignorance of the law is no excuse, isn’t / wasn’t it?

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