Then remember the famous lines from 1984.

Oh, and another thing: if those men were proper journalists they would have been working for a proper newspaper and not for a political party.

One of them is such an excellent journalist that when he caught Ali Sadr Hasheminejad slipping out of Pilatus Bank at night with an employee and several bags, he didn’t even know who he was because he had never seen his picture or read his name. I got so infuriated watching him run after the BANK’S OWNER without knowing who he is and telling the camera that he is an “impjegat tal-bank” that I sent a message to the people in charge of that particular newsroom – as I would have done to any other newsroom making the same mistake – saying “FFS, THAT’S THE MAN WHO OWNS THE BLOODY BANK.”

Imma l-aqwa he’s a man, u allura bilfors bravu.

And in the other photograph you have, photographed more recently with Adrian Delia, NET TV reporter Mario Frendo, Dione Borg, a Nationalist Party media old-timer and part of the building’s furniture, and the NET TV reporter who ran after Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, owner of Pilatus Bank, as he raced away from the bank with a couple of bags and an employee carrying more.

All seven of these men segued smoothly from working on Simon Busuttil’s electoral campaign to working on Adrian Delia’s campaign to replace him.

If they had the values – political values and values of integrity – that were required to understand what Busuttil was all about and what he was campaigning for, then they wouldn’t have been able to work for Delia. They are able to work for Delia now, and with such enthusiasm, because their real beliefs – if you can call them that – are closer to those of Delia than they are to those of Busuttil. And that means that they were the wrong people to work for Busuttil and the inevitable happened.

It is hard for the decent people who worked on that campaign to absorb the fact that they were surrounded by people who were not campaigning, as they themselves were, out of a sense of justice and what is right and proper, but instead because they wanted to win, and be part of a winning team, like at football.

And I hate to say it, but Going Rate Portelli doesn’t strike me as being at all bright or media savvy, besides his quite noticeable personality flaws, so what on earth was he going on a campaign team in a very difficult election, when only the brightest and the best are needed and everyone else is surplus to requirements because they are dead wood that gets in the way, if they are not actually collaborating with the enemy? And by that, I don’t necessarily mean the enemy in the Labour Party but the enemy at the Nationalist Party’s gate.

Let’s say these people made a real error of judgement when they opted to work for Delia, rather than a rational choice to nail their colours to a tosser’s mast for their own personal hoped-for benefit. But once Delia began to insult Simon Busuttil and other key players in the Nationalist Party, once he began to attack and hurl insults at the very organisation he is planning on leading, then they should have stepped firmly away and not gone back.

And that’s leaving aside the swirl of suspicious entanglements in which he operates, and his mountain of debt which he failed to tell them about. That’s what people of integrity do, out of self-respect if nothing else.

There’s another point I wish to make. Their socio-educational backgrounds may not have equipped these people to understand, let alone identify, the difference between real money and the big, hot talk and blather of a megalomaniac with a mountain of debt. But in their positions as journalists and political campaigners, they should most certainly have learned.

And to further confirm Malta’s foul reputation as World Money-Laundering Central, here’s an except from the report:

L Burke Files, an international financial investigator, said these company structures were “purposefully opaque”. Foreign criminals used Scottish limited partnerships, or SLPs, he said. In June the government announced SLPs would have to name their significant owners, or pay fines, amid evidence of growing fraud.

“No one suspects Scotland. It’s never been on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) list of non-compliant countries,” Files said. “If you are going to launder money it’s probably best not to run it between Russia, Malta and the Cayman Islands. Does Scotland raise a red flag in your mind? No.”

This only serves to put Dr Delia’s deceitful statements about how he doesn’t believe the Egrant Inc reports because “no documents were published and he hasn’t seen them” in their proper perspective. Mr Portelli assures me that he didn’t show them to Dr Delia, but one would hope that Dr Delia would believe one of his top collaborators when he tells him that yes, those documents do exist because he not only saw them but actually handed them in to the inquiring magistrate.

That is exactly how Mr Portelli came to hand them in. He said on television that he had seen them and the following morning got a call from the inquiring magistrate, who summoned him.

People who are asking whether I should be believed should simply grow up, learn how to assess facts and information – even if it requires burying the axe these individuals love to grind against me, eternally – and work out that whether they like me or not is irrelevant to the facts of the matter about Adrian Delia.

It would be far more honest of them to say, “Yes, I can see the nature of Adrian Delia’s involvement here, and perhaps it would be better to avoid that kind of shadiness in a leader, but I like him anyway and I don’t give a damn because I am still going to root for him.”

Laburisti in the last general election were far more honest, in saying “I know they are corrupt and on the take, but I don’t care as long as I have money in my pocket.”

Egrant Inc and 52 Greek Street: Malta is now such a beautiful place to live.

The email, sent to the Prime Minister’s preferred mode of communication, joseph@josephmuscat.com, says:

Dr Muscat,

Maria Efimova
Mobile telephone number and address included

The Prime Minister did not reply. A screenshot of the actual email is reproduced below with Mrs Efimova’s personal contact details and former home address deleted.

Mrs Efimova is the former Pilatus Bank employee who revealed that the bank kept in its safe two declarations of trust which identify Prime Minister Muscat’s wife as a shareholder of the Panama company Egrant Inc. The revelations caused a major scandal but did not – as most assume to be the case – trigger a general election.

The general election had already been scheduled for 27th May at the time this website reported on the ownership of Egrant Inc. The reports delayed the election by one week, to the following Saturday.

Mrs Efimova’s father worked for the Russian government before his retirement some years ago. Her mother died last year and she was unable to travel to Russia for the funeral because the Courts of Justice in Malta had sequestered both her passports: her foreign-travel passport and the passport which all Russian citizens require to travel within Russian territory. Requests for the release of her passports at the time were refused.

His statement said that the Courts of Justice in Malta still hold her Russian passport, her Russian internal passport and her Malta residence permit, which means that none of this could have been used when she left Malta.

I have read much of what has been written in newspaper reports and social media comments about this matter of the passport, and the speculation attendant on that. And all I could think was how ill-informed people are, and how it handicaps their ability to work out how and why things happen.

When the Panama story broke, I found myself having to explain what an offshore company is, and how it is not a company with offices and desks and a telephone number and a front door and secretaries who are prepared to have little chats with customers about the contents of the stockroom.

Now I find myself having to explain to people why Frank Portelli is personally liable for his millions of euros in debt even though the bank loans and overdrafts pertain to his hospital business, which is owned by a technically bankrupt limited liability company.

I am quite sure that within the next couple of days I will find myself having to explain what bankruptcy is, how it involves a legal process, why Frank Portelli has avoided filing for personal bankruptcy and for the bankruptcy of his companies (and how bankrupts are barred from public office).

Today I am going to explain, for my sins, that a passport is only a paper document that symbolises something, which means that only the issuing state is able to deny a person one of its passports.

Malta’s Courts of Justice/police can seize and hold a Russian woman’s passport DOCUMENT but they cannot deny her a Russian PASSPORT.

Russia, like Malta and every other state on the planet, is at liberty to issue its citizens with passport documents as and when it deems fit, and the police force, government or Courts of Justice of no other country can do anything about it.

If you lose your Maltese passport or have it stolen, what happens? You take an oath that it was lost or stolen, and Malta issues you with a new document with a different number. Malta does not tell you: “Oh my God, you lost your passport! You were careless enough to have it stolen! Now you’re not going to get another one.”

It’s quite obvious to me what happened here: Russia cancelled the passport which the Attorney-General is guarding so closely, issued its citizen with a new one and enabled her to leave a country which has become dangerous for her.

But this seems not to have occurred to anyone, presumably because they think that the Maltese government has the right, ability or power to prevent Russian citizens from holding Russian passports or being issued with them.

I knew immediately this would happen when Prime Minister Muscat used the general election campaign to turn an internal, domestic Maltese government matter – the ownership of Panama company Egrant Inc – into a diplomatic incident by accusing the Russian government of meddling in Malta’s general elections, and claiming that the Pilatus Bank whistle-blower was a spy for the Russian government, deliberately causing trouble for him on Putin’s instructions.

The Russian government reacted with a formal statement released through its embassy in Malta.

It is truly amazing that the Maltese public ignored or simply did not grasp the diplomatic significance of this: that it was not Joseph Muscat hitting out at Maria Efimova, but Malta launching a missile at Russia, Valletta hitting out at Moscow, the Maltese Prime Minister chucking knives at the Kremlin.

And then I knew for certain that she would have to leave when the Maltese Prime Minister began threatening her on television, during a widely watched television show. The Egrant Inc story is a dreadful calumny, he said, and when the magistrate concludes his inquiry, the person who invented it will have to face justice and prison.

He didn’t mean me. He meant Maria Efimova. Right there, I understood at once – as did she – that the Maltese prime minister was planning to come after her using his corrupt police force, and that she would be crazy and irresponsible, with two young children to think of, to stay on in Malta. I have no doubt her country and its embassy thought the same thing.

And while we’re on the subject, it’s quite odd that we’re not considering for one minute how the Kremlin feels about Muscat’s government selling Maltese citizenship to literally hundreds of prominent Russians and their families.

No country has the right or ability to deprive foreign citizens of their passports.

The police told the press that they don’t know how much he took, but it “could be more than €20,000”. Gosh, as much as that?

Meanwhile, I hasten to remind you that these are the very same police who sat on, concealed and ignored the results of an investigation by Malta’s official anti-money-laundering state investigators, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, which told them that Keith Schembri, the prime minister’s chief of staff, had taken a sizeable cut from Brian Tonna, the corrupt accountant who helps the gangland sharks at the Auberge de Castille to launder money through a complicated arrangement of (no longer) secret offshore companies, on the sale of Maltese citizenship to Russians.

The transactions were made through Pilatus Bank, the washing-machine set up by an Iranian in his 30s, who travels on a St Kitts & Nevis passport, with Iranian money via Hong Kong and licensed by Muscat’s government.

That Identity Malta clerk probably thought that if the bosses were doing it, then he could too. What he didn’t count on is that the bosses now need some examples to show how serious they are and how they are clamping down on abuse – but only selectively and certainly not on themselves.

It’s a shame that ‘nobody’ clerk wasn’t Neville Gafa, who lives in Konrad Mizzi’s and Keith Schembri’s trouser-pocket, and who was neither arrested nor arraigned despite serious allegations about how he took money to process visas for Libyans for hospital treatment. And it’s a shame, too, that he isn’t the Prime Minister’s cousin, Robert Falzon, who issued EU Schengen visas to 7,000 Algerians in just a few months when he was Malta’s consul in Algiers, with the Prime Minister posturing about ‘abuse’ only after the scandal broke internationally.

So if you’re a small fish in Malta, then watch out, sucker. If you’re a Kentucky Fried Chicken employee caught with his hand in the till, they’ll jail you for four years for money-laundering and confiscate your house. If you’re a government clerk who takes €20,000 from their fishy passport fund, you’re crucified by the police and all over the media.

But if you’re the Prime Minister’s chief of staff who the state’s own anti-money-laundering investigators have said is involved in laundering millions of euros, then you get to walk up Merchants Street past the cheering crowds behind barriers, to your office at the Auberge de Castille, two days after the country has voted you back into power again and safe in the knowledge that the police won’t touch you until the Nationalists are voted back into power.

And so you make sure that the Nationalists are not voted back into power.

While a KFC employee is imprisoned for four years for ‘money-laundering’, and a passports office clerk is arrested and arraigned for taking 20,000 euros, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff scuttles freely about with his offshore companies, his secret bank accounts, and his money-laundering transactions that were investigated by the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit.

The bank is at the epicentre of a scandal involving suspicions of money-laundering, and is also the related subject of an inquiry by Magistrate Aaron Bugeja, which is primarily into the ownership of Egrant Inc, the third company set up in Panama in tandem with those owned by Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.

The banking inspectors – two senior inspectors and five junior inspectors – received instructions from their superiors on 31st May, three days before Malta went to the polls in a general election, to go to Pilatus Bank and carry out an on-site inspection. This was when the bank was still under investigation by court-appointed experts under the direction of Magistrate Bugeja.

Sources at the Malta Financial Services Authority have informed this website that all seven banking inspectors were unanimous in refusing the instructions, putting themselves at risk of disciplinary action for insubordination.

Late last Friday, all seven inspectors received an email from a senior MFSA executive, giving them an ultimatum: they either inspect the bank on site, or they inspect, in their own offices, files which Pilatus Bank would deliver to the MFSA. The inspectors refused, pointing out that if the bank is allowed to choose and deliver files for inspection, it would deliver only ‘clean’ files.

Faced with this ultimatum, one of the inspectors – Mario Felice – resigned on Monday. Mr Felice could not be reached for comment.

The banking inspectors gave as the reason for their refusal to inspect the bank on site the fact that they themselves are under investigation in a separate magisterial inquiry – led by Magistrate Consuelo Herrera – into how a Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit report about Pilatus Bank reached the press.

The banking inspectors, sources said, told their superiors that it would not be appropriate for them to conduct an inspection at the very same bank at whose request they are being investigated themselves.

The same sources have told this website that the FIAU report about Pilatus Bank, which was leaked to the press, was accessible to around 50 members of staff at the Malta Financial Services Authority, “including the entire banking unit, of course, all of whom were summoned en masse before Magistrate Herrera and grilled about whether they saw it, downloaded it or printed it, including a heavily pregnant member of staff who had been on maternity leave at the time”.

Divulging the report to the media exposes staff members to heavy fines and a prison sentence.

The Malta Financial Services Authority had received that report from the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit last year. During an on-site inspection at Pilatus Bank in March that year, the FIAU had found evidence of suspicious transactions and had alerted the MFSA accordingly.

The Malta Financial Services Authority, sources told this website, was initially in a quandary as to how to handle the situation, but then dropped the matter when Manfred Galdes handed in his resignation as director of the FIAU. Dr Galdes resigned shortly after presenting separate reports on the offshore activities of key government officials to Police Commissioner Michael Cassar, who resigned within 24 hours citing health reasons. He was replaced by Lawrence Cutajar, who took no action.

Sources told this website that the real reason the Malta Financial Services Authority’s banking inspectors are refusing to carry out an inspection at Pilatus Bank is that they fear they are going to be used in a whitewash operation which will see the bank being given a “clean bill of health” which it will then use to its own advantage.

“They suspect that there may be collusion between topmost officials at the Malta Financial Services Authority and Seyed Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, who owns the bank. If there is such collusion, then the bank will have had ample time to clear the decks before the inspectors move in,” the sources said.

“The feeling is that the pressure for the inspection is actually being exerted by the bank on the MFSA executive, rather than the other way round, and that this is happening because Mr Hasheminejad wants some kind of ‘good conduct certificate’ for his bank that he can use for his purposes.”

It was the Malta Financial Services Authority’s banking unit which originally alerted the Financial Services Authority to suspect activity and processes at Pilatus Bank, the sources said. “Neither organisation wanted to handle the matter at first, but then it was decided that the FIAU would do so because it looked like money-laundering, which is the FIAU’s remit,” the sources said. “The bank’s business model makes no sense at all.”

The chairman of the Malta Financial Services Authority, Joe Bannister, has not commented publicly on the ongoing controversy. He was seen in the company of Seyed Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, owner of Pilatus Bank, at Frankfurt airport last week. They took the flight back to Malta together.

On Tuesday, 6th June – the new government’s second day in business – staff at the MITA received an email from the executive chairman, Tony Sultana , who is active in the Labour Party (he represented the Labour Party on the Electoral Commission and was a director of its media operations), informing them that Dr Caruana was no longer chief technology officer and that he would be reassigned to another role in the agency.

Sources at the agency informed this website that the matter had not been discussed with Dr Caruana and that he was simply informed of his removal and demotion “two minutes before the rest of us received the email”.

This website rang Dr Caruana for comment on his resignation, but he declined to speak. Dr Caruana is the court expert appointed by Magistrate Aaron Bugeja to assist him in information technology matters on the inquiry into the ownership of Egrant Inc, the third Panama company set up in tandem with the two owned by the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Keith Schembri, and his key cabinet minister, Konrad Mizzi.

When we rang Dr Caruana two weeks ago for comment after receiving the news of his removal from the post of CTO at the Malta Information Technology Agency, he said that this would not affect his work on the magisterial inquiry, pointing out that the magistrate had appointed him in his personal professional capacity and not as CTO of the state information technology agency.

Godwin Caruana is seen here entering the premises of Pilatus Bank with inquiring magistrate Aaron Bugeja at the start of the Egrant Inc inquiry.