It was February 22, eight years ago, and, for a second, we wondered what Mr and Mrs Konrad Mizzi would be eating for Easter lunch. Would it be New Zealand lamb, asked Daphne Caruana Galizia, less rhetorically and more theatrically? As with many of her memorable teasers, more memorable than most, her readers did not at first know what she was talking about. It could have gone in a different direction. We could have been regaled with a classic culinary series on slow-roasting sides of politician meat basted in sarcasm and generous wit.
Instead, without knowing it, we got the first glimpse of the crime that would define this country’s politics and culture for at least the next eight years. The news we are gathering now tells us we’ll still digest that Easter menu for several more years.
The reference to the New Zealand lamb was allegorical. Daphne knew Mizzi had used financial structures Down Under to conceal a Panama company he set up just as he came to office as minister for energy in 2013, by all accounts, just as he took a significant hit to his income when he gave up his private sector career to enter politics. She told us about it and Mizzi said she had been lying. Then, in April of eight years ago, the Panama Papers were leaked and we discovered he was the liar.
Between furtively setting up the Panama company in 2013 and its exposure in 2016, Mizzi contracted a consortium led by Yorgen Fenech to supply Malta with electricity through the Electrogas firm. Later reviews by the national auditor found the contracting process problematic and its results disadvantageous to Maltese consumers, who would have paid less for electricity had Electrogas not been hired to supply it.
In February 2017, a year and a few days after the New Zealand lamb post, Daphne published another teaser. This time, she did not attempt humour. Perhaps the disappointment with Mizzi’s political survival a year after she exposed his secret offshore accounts made it harder for her to see the funny side. This teaser was a short statement of banal fact: “17 Black: the name of a company incorporated in Dubai.” We knew what that meant as much as we understood at first reading her jibes about ovine food a year before.
Somebody understood what that headline meant. It meant Daphne had figured out or would figure out that Mizzi’s Panama company was allegedly due to receive millions from this Dubai company, which Fenech owned. The Fenech whom Mizzi had just contracted to sell energy to Maltese consumers at higher prices than they would otherwise pay.
I don’t know if Daphne had figured all that out by the time she was dead the following October. I know I only understood this when the rest of us did, when other journalists, including reporters working for this newspaper, published these revelations in 2018.
Of course, it’s not just Mizzi. Keith Schembri, then chief of the prime minister’s staff, was involved in everything: New Zealand structures, Panama companies and millions allegedly fixed to flow from Dubai. There has been some cause to suspect the big boss, Joseph Muscat, was also involved in the arrangement. An inquiry into another scandal appeared to exonerate him from criminal responsibility. He has political responsibility aplenty: he defended Schembri and Mizzi, retained them in government, protected them, and, eventually, in 2019, went down with them when his government crumbled.
When Simon Busuttil presented a magistrate with what evidence he could compile, Joseph Muscat mocked him on TV- Manuel Delia
What material effect did the protection Muscat gave Mizzi and Schembri have? Eight years have passed and the two have never been charged for bribery and corruption in connection with this case. That’s eight years we’ve known and seen documentary evidence of their alleged crimes and they’ve seen zero consequences. They and the people who allegedly set out to bribe them. Indeed, the people who set out to bribe them – Fenech most prominently – still profit from Electrogas and over-charging Maltese consumers regardless of whether they can afford electricity at the rates they charge.
Consider how the police did not act on the evidence in the public domain and made no effort to use their powers to discover more. The prosecutor directed the police to refrain from gathering proof, such as by seizing computer servers from the accountants who set up the Panama structures for Mizzi and Schembri, saying that bothering the accountants with a raid would be intrusive.
When then Leader of Opposition Simon Busuttil presented a magistrate with what evidence he could compile without the benefit of the police’s powers of search and arrest, Muscat mocked him on TV. Muscat accused Busuttil of faking and that the boxes of evidence had contained food, not proof of crime.
Muscat lost his job in 2019. In theory, he could no longer guarantee Schembri and Mizzi’s impunity after that. Muscat’s replacement, Robert Abela, came into the job making a show of being unforgiving towards Schembri and Mizzi. He excluded them from the government and shunned them from the party.
Yet, more than three years after they lost political power, they were still not criminally charged despite the long-publicised evidence of their alleged corruption. That’s because Abela continued protecting them. The police were still held back and the prosecutor was still unwilling to act on crimes committed by senior Labour Party figures.
Mizzi, Schembri, Fenech, et al. thought they’d get away with it but that may change. Busuttil and his non-pizza boxes sparked a magistrate’s inquiry, supplemented with evidence and later submissions by David Casa and Repubblika. The inquiry is concluded, and we’re waiting to see what the prosecutor will do about the findings. The magistrate reportedly found that there is enough evidence for charges to be brought against Schembri and Mizzi. So do the people who set out to bribe them and are profiting from every electricity bill we pay.
Just a few days before news emerged of the conclusion of this inquiry, Abela announced he would change the laws on magisterial inquiries. His remarks implied that he intended to abolish the right that Busuttil, Casa and Repubblika had exercised to ask a magistrate to start an inquiry even when the police were unwilling to investigate. Abela called it an “abuse of the system” and likened inquiries to “the inquisition”.
He’s doing two things there. He’s getting ready to protect himself from future possible inquiries into corruption that has yet to be exposed. He also discredits the inquiry into the corruption related to 17 Black because Abela protects himself like Muscat before him: by protecting Mizzi and Schembri.
It’s a bit like the truel at the end of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. As their eyes flit and their guns sweat, ask yourself who the good one is.