For 45 long months, Joseph Muscat did not lift a single finger to bring about some form of justice with regards to the Panama Papers revelations. The man was just intent on covering up, protecting and defending Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri.
As the months passed by, it was obvious that Muscat had his hands tied: for some as yet unknown reason, he was forced to cover up for the two internationally acclaimed political delinquents.
It now appears that the two had some sort of hold on our prime minister. They must know something about him, and this rendered him an impotent, but important, figurehead in their hands – a puppet who could not act unless given the go-ahead by Mizzi and Schembri.
Their hold on him appears to have been so great that Muscat had to give up the most prestigious of posts in the European Union, a post he had been in pole position to get until 2016.
Today, with the dramatic unfolding of the Yorgen Fenech and Melvin Theuma testimonies, we suspect what it is all about: Joseph Muscat is just the frontman for a number of unscrupulous businesspeople who, thanks to the raba' sular clique denounced by Speaker Anġlu Farrugia seven years ago, have taken over many of our country’s institutions through a silent and bloodless coup d’état.
While the material organiser behind the raba' sular meetings was Sandro Chetcuti, the brains behind the whole thing was Keith Schembri. Schembri is the webmaster, the head of the octopus. And the octopus, it appears, has spread its tentacles in many of the Maltese institutions.
Let us take the organisation of lands, requisitions, permits, infrastructure development, roads and transport. By placing faithful Labour Party officials and sworn obedient party servants as CEOs in the Transport Authority, the Planning Authority, Infrastructure Malta and the Lands Authority, Schembri had the ability to bring practically all the public land in Malta under his control.
Control of land use, permits and road development means hundreds of millions in potential tanġenti, and, above all, it brings with it unmeasurable power and the reverence worthy of any respectable capo Mafioso.
The ongoing court hearings are suggesting that this reverential fear of the almighty, invincible and nearly always invisible Keith Schembri (Muscat’s ‘Invictus’ is just the visible, but powerless, distraction) seems to have embedded its roots even amongst certain police officers.
With all the things that have come up during these court hearings, we are all flabbergasted to witness how the investigators did not immediately arrest Schembri to ensure that the puppet master did not continue to perpetuate his dirty manoeuvres. Instead, the man from Santa Marija Estate is to this day free at home, possibly dishing out instructions to his faithful Neville, Kenneth, Yorgen etc by the dozen. From the Egrant report, we get to know that the Dubai authorities and the Latvia ones are still awaiting official requests from their Maltese counterparts with regards to the 17 Black account.
We then learn from the court proceedings that the investigators did not bother to seal Schembri’s office in Castille. It is the first elementary thing that any of us laymen and women, for that matter, learnt just by watching Colombo, Kojack and Inspector Derrick or Montalbano.
Instead, our investigators behave like Inspector Clouseau or Mr Bean. Rather than changing the lock and keeping the key themselves, incredibly enough, our investigators leave Schembri’s Castille office key in the hands of one of Schembri’s most faithful Castille men, Mark Farrugia. Are there any other copies of this key? Who knows how many people could have entered this office to contaminate any possible proof.
Then, the investigators allowed Schembri to communicate with Fenech when he was under the custody of the police, using the services of Dr Adrian Vella, who acted as the go-between for the capo mafia and the assassination mandante. All this happened under the nose of the police.
The investigators were then told by Schembri that he had lost his mobile. And what do they do? Instead of using the existing latest technology that could, according to experts, trace a missing phone in an hour, they just take Schembri’s word that he had lost it. Incredible.
Not even Fantozzi has regaled us with such mirth in the many hilarious episodes he acted in. And then, the cherry on the cake: Schembri refuses to disclose his iCloud password and the investigators just accept his resounding “no”. Schembri has so decreed and we must all abide by his decision. How pathetic. Excuse me, but I cannot accept that some investigators in our police force are so thick. Even a child would know better.
Not content with all this scheming, we now learn that on Boxing Day Schembri was travelling abroad after police granted him permission to take his family abroad on “a three-day getaway”.
This is unbelievable. After being given 50 days by Muscat to clean up his dirt in Malta, the police now give him three days to clean up from abroad.
There can only be two reasons for such behaviour: either certain investigators are in Schembri’s pocket or else they are totally inept and unfit for the job.
Whatever the reason, things cannot simply continue this way: what investigators are handling here is not the theft of a kilo of potatoes but the brutal and heartless assassination of a human being who was unjustly deprived of her sacrosanct right to life.
Daphne, her family and all honest Maltese deserve much better than all this.
Arnold Cassola is former secretary general of the European Green Party and former Member of the Italian Parliament.
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Either certain investigators are in Schembri’s pocket or they are totally inept