Keith Schembri would put $600,000 a year in secret account, bank told

A new day, a new scandal involving the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri. Today, the Times of Malta breaks the news that Keith Schembri’s corrupt accountant, Karl Cini of Nexia BT, told one of the foreign banks – FPB Bank in Panama – at which he was desperately trying to open an account that Schembri would deposit $50,000 a month against invoices raised for “consultancy”. That’s $600,000 a year. The bank was also told that Schembri would pay out half of this against invoices.

This is, of course, a classic money-laundering set-up. Everybody in the financial world has recognised it for what it is. Joseph Muscat and Keith Schembri are counting on the fact that the vast majority of their supporters haven’t a clue what money-laundering is, think that one bank account is pretty much like another, have trouble with the word ‘invoice’, and think of the world of business as some mysterious place where people go to cut easy money from low-hanging branches.