GUEST POST/Keith Schembri takes us for fools

This blog-post was written by Matthew S.

So Keith Schembri and the Labour media want us to believe that the Australia Financial Review’s revelations yesterday have “burst the bubble”. Hardly. The bubble has just turned into a hot-air balloon.

Let’s start with that business about expanding into recycling in Dubai and India, of all places. This is quite the red herring. Recycling is a legitimate business which has cheap running costs in India and contributes considerably to its economy. Rag-pickers (usually women) will happily sit in steaming piles of Keith Schembri’s waste and meticulously separate it according to quality, colour and a host of other characteristics (newspapers are the least valuable) in return for 100 rupees (€1.33) a day and a slew of respiratory illnesses over a lifetime (recycling in India is primitive).

But then, it is unfortunate that recycling and waste disposal, particularly in Third World and under-developed countries, is associated with money-laundering and organised crime, particularly Cosa Nostra and Camorra.

To understand the real shadiness of Keith Schembri’s Panamanian company, New Zealand Trust and attempted bank accounts, though, it is his “remote gaming interests” that we have to look at. And remote gaming, too, has strong links to organised crime as a preferred form of laundering money, especially with the ‘Ndrangeta, which traffics most of the world’s cocaine.

Schembri is so desperate to keep this one on the down-low that, even in his official statement released yesterday, he focused on “recycling and other activities” at first, and mentioned remote-gaming as an afterthought further down, hoping either that we would have stopped reading or that the phrase “recycling and other activities” would catch on. But the Australian Financial Review had quoted from emails that were very specific: recycling and remote gaming.

Now here’s the thing. Kasco Holdings is not involved in remote gaming in any shape or form, at least not that anybody knows of. Also, the Panama company and New Zealand trust have nothing to do with Kasco Holdings and it is Keith Schembri personally who is the ultimate beneficial owner. Anybody with a modicum of sense will tell you that you first build the business – in this case, remote gaming – and only then do you set up finding ways of channelling its massive profits into secret companies in tax havens. Keith Schembri’s ludicrous claims yesterday have him putting the cart before the horse: first he sets up the secret company and trust in New Zealand, then he sets up getting involved in remote gaming. Well, hardly.

Moreover, because it’s remote gaming, and remote gaming is often the vehicle of choice for laundering the money of drug-traffickers and terrorists, there is a slew of licences, laws and regulations to get through and adhere to. Money-launders are being forced out Italy’s gaming market (and into Malta, for one) because regulation there has become so tight in the fight against organised crime.

The European Commission’s most recent action plan on gambling, including remote gaming, and money-laundering was only approved in late 2015. As chief of staff to the prime minister of a European Union member state, Keith Schembri should be cognisant of this fact. But he is not into politics. He is into business, and it looks like he took on the role of chief of staff to the prime minister to maximise his (illegitimate) business opportunities. Several members of the ‘Ndrangheta were arrested in Malta last year and extradited to Italy because they were caught laundering money through remote-gaming companies here, so Schembri should be hyper-aware of it.

And as chief of staff to any prime minister, he should not be in business at all, let alone considering a market with such a shady reputation.

Keith Schembri said yesterday, absurdly, that the Australian Financial Review’s revelations clear him of links to corruption, including corruption with Azerbaijan. Oh right, because if President Aliyev were going to funnel a 10% ‘brokerage fee’ to Schembri, he would of course enclose a payment slip with the words ‘FROM AZERBAIJAN WITH LOVE’ in pink and orange highlighter. Perhaps he could also add ‘THESE ARE THE PROCEEDS OF CORRUPTION’ while he’s at it.

Don’t take us for fools, Mr Schembri. You, Konrad Mizzi and and Joseph Muscat have to go because you are all equally corrupt as each other. You are in this together. It was your roadmap, and planning began well ahead of the general election, which is exactly why Brian Tonna of Nexia BT got a desk at the Office of the Prime Minister and Karl Cini dived straight in to setting up those shady companies on 14 March 2013, three days after the cabinet of government was sworn in.