Panamagate has so far been discussed from the point of view of people who were sceptical of Konrad Mizzi’s explanations from the very start. But suppose you’re a thoughtful Labour MP who likes Mizzi and would like to believe him.

You’d experience three nagging difficulties that haven’t received enough public attention so far.

The first difficulty can be called the Xarabank problem. Over the years, that TV programme’s regular audience has had several tutorials in how to sift strange-but-true stories from ones that have simply been made up.

It’s a game format of four or five speakers, each telling a wild story, only one of which is true.

The audience has to smoke out the liars and identify the true story.

The audience is helped by a panel of experts – often including a police officer, a psychologist or a lawyer – who ask probing questions.

If there is one thing the Xarabank audience has learned over the years, it’s this: apart from serious inconsistency, the biggest indicator of a liar is not too little explanation but too much.

Give too many reasons, especially if they don’t come out all at once, and the police prick up their ears. It all sounds too much like improvisation.

On Xarabank, Mizzi’s explanations would make the panel sit up straight.

To the question, “Why did you set up a trust abroad?”, Mizzi has given no fewer than five different reasons.

Because some of his property is abroad. Because it’s a ‘neutral’ place between Malta, where he’s based, and China, where his wife is based.

Because although he’s working in Malta now, he might one day go work and live elsewhere.

Because setting up in Malta might generate a conflict of interest, given that there are too few financial operators and they bid for government contracts in which he might be involved.

Because it’s a free world and he can shop around.

Some financial experts have questioned the individualreasons. But, taken together, these reasons also undermine each other.

If a free world enables you to be a global shopper, wherever you are, why does it then make a difference that you might move away from Malta some day? If the driving reason for setting up a trust outside Malta is a technical one (property abroad), why do family considerations (‘neutral’ place between Malta and China) even enter the equation?

The family considerations suggest both Malta and China were possible options but undesirable. The technical consideration suggests Malta wasn’t really feasible.

Mizzi has now settled on emphasising conflicts of interest in Malta but it was not always so.

In addition, you would think the Prime Minister would be most aware of the conflict-of-interest argument but, with journalists last week, Joseph Muscat plumped for the‘property abroad’ reason, which is a reason that is difficultto understand.

It took only a week of Panamagate for Mizzi to feel obliged to announce he was closing his Panama company down

If it’s because some of his property is in London, why is New Zealand okay? From New Zealand’s perspective, London is ‘abroad’ as well. It also doesn’t help that Mizzi has given two different answers to the question asking how much wealth he has.

He has both hinted at a large nest egg built up during his few years working in the international private sector and said that his wealth is the modest amount he has declared as minister.

There is a second nagging difficulty. If you’re a Labour MP, one of the most reassuring aspects of the last three years of Labour government must have been the feeling that, in Muscat, Labour has a leader with a finger firmly on the popular pulse.

He hasn’t always done the popular thing but he has been able to gauge the mood.

Now, both Mizzi and Muscat have assured us that the Prime Minister has only known about Mizzi’s trust and Panama company for the last month or so; that is, before the fact became public but only since Mizzi submitted his draft declaration of assets for parliamentary scrutiny. Many people don’t believe this timeline.

But remember, you’re a Labour MP who wants to believe it. What do you conclude?

In any democracy, including Malta, a Prime Minister should be livid at being informedabout ownership of a Panama company after the fact, and not before the action was contemplated. Even if you believe there is nothing intrinsically wrong with it – and Muscat is the only EU Prime Minister who thinks that – a clued-up politician would know how badly such a story would play in the media if it broke.

In fact, it took only a week of Panamagate for Mizzi to feel obliged to announce that he was closing his Panama company down.

Any clued-up leader would have ordered Mizzi to close down the Panama company immediately, before the story broke. Muscat didn’t.

A Labour MP, who wants to believe in Muscat’s honesty, has to believe that Muscat has seriously lost touch.

But, for our Labour MP, it goes beyond Muscat’s serious lapse of judgement.

There is a third nagging difficulty, which we can call the Deep Throat problem.

During the 1970s Watergate scandal, it was quite clear that the main source for the journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward was a privileged Washington insider, who was nicknamed Deep Throat.

The sensitive information couldn’t have come from anywhere else.

It was no surprise when, in 2005, Deep Throat was confirmed to be the then FBI deputy director Mark Felt.

Panamagate must also have a privileged source (or sources). You can have people around you who suspect you have a company in Panama but that’s different from knowing the exact details.

The information leaked to journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia is top secret; officially, not even states can obtain it.

It can only be known to a few to begin with, and only a few have the means of hacking or coaxing out the information.

It’s unlikely that the sources are only based in Malta.

Our thoughtful Labour MP has to be wondering whether Caruana Galizia’s sources have an international dimension – whether it’s a State, Interpol, the International Consortiumof Investigative Journalists or some other international organisation. If this is the case, Panamagate doesn’t end here, not even with Mizzi’s closing ofhis company.

And if it doesn’t end here, how far will it go?