There are decisions which produce immediate consequences, for example, like jumping off the top of a building without a parachute. And then there are decisions that take years before their cows finally come home.

Lately one of these cows asked why one appoints a minister for finance in the first place. In some countries, the holder of the position is referred to as the treasurer and he is engaged purposely to keep guard over the country’s finances which is strangely called the treasury.

This trivia of information might give Edward Scicluna a small hint as to why he has been told to sit at a desk in an elegant government office complete with government car and driver on call.

I can recall Scicluna avoiding questions as to whether the much publicised initial €30 million injection from the new Electrogas consortium was actually paid into Enemalta as promised in 2014.

It’s been a while but was it ever paid?  The crash in oil prices might have made the government forget that one. How can one be sure when so much happens in a week under Labour?

The days of Café Premier and of Sai Mizzi being sent €13,000 a month for staying at home and raising her husband’s children are long gone.

I wonder how she makes ends meet nowadays when her husband lives only on a meagre MP’s honorarium and a balance of €92 sitting in an offshore bank somewhere.

And in all this Scicluna claims that he and Enemalta, along with his former boss, are victims

Edward Scicluna sat dusting his desk when Ram Tumuluri met up with Konrad Mizzi and struck a fantastic deal giving some foreign unknown gang some €80 million a year and the keys to three public hospitals.

He must have been informed when Gasol Inc suddenly sold for profit its interest in the pre-construction phase of Electrogas.

What he did not know was that Nexia BT were sweating under the pressure of opening some bank accounts for their secret clients who sat next to him at the same cabinet table every Tuesday.

But where was Scicluna in April 2016 when an opposition MP stood up and asked if the newly-discovered “family- planning” New Zealand trusts of Konrad Mizzi and of Keith Schembri had been registered with the Commissioner of Inland Revenue as required of law-abiding honest citizens?

Later, Schembri would testify that he could not trust the Maltese banking system with the confidentiality he required and his plans of €5,000 daily from 20 overseas target clients, which included one called 17 Black and another called Macbridge.

And in all this, Scicluna claims that he and Enemalta, along with his former boss and corrupt mates, are “victims”. Pass me the valium bottle. 

We always thought the job of a treasurer of any club or organisation was to review all prospective agreements and to be a watchdog that barks when such agreements were financially unsound or crooked.

But this watchdog never barked when his boss allowed his star energy minister and Electrogas to saddle the whole country with fixed purchase LNG supplies, which today is seven times the market price of LNG. Not one due diligence whimper when the Aliyev- Socar co-owner in Electrogas was given the skewed sole- agent fixed-price contract for the essential supply of that gas.

I truly believe that Scicluna, four years into knowing that he had robbers in his house – as he so beautifully now describes Labour’s good governance levels – would love to reduce our utility bills in line with market forces.

But he can’t. His hands are tied by his earlier decision to sell one third of Enemalta along with its board autonomy back in 2013 to Shanghai Electric.   

Moneyval reports are not interested in specific cases of corrupt politicians stealing from their own people. They are not guardians of public morality.

Their scope is to gauge whether a country like Malta taken as a whole is a failed state when it comes to fighting international money laundering. Some shade of grey is on its way.