The two most explosive questions in politics are: What did you know? And when did you know it?
When Herman Grech asked Joseph Muscat these questions, here’s what Times of Malta's editor-in-chief got for answers: I won’t speculate. Time will tell. It wouldn’t be ethical for me to say. I was always given an explanation. I won’t pass judgement. I still can’t understand that. I honestly can’t remember.
No wonder the Labour media are hiding this interview from their audience. Muscat is being increasingly defined by what he hides.
Grech reminded him that when he was asked about the last time he had spoken to Yorgen Fenech, Muscat also couldn’t honestly quite remember. “A year, maybe two.’’ He had honestly forgotten he had been in a WhatsApp chat group of three with Fenech (and Keith Schembri).
What about when he had asked Schembri about the ownership of 17 Black? (That is, Fenech’s secret company, which was revealed to be committed to paying €5,000 per day to the Panama companies of Schembri and Konrad Mizzi.)
Here’s Muscat: “Initially not. I had no idea. […] And it’s not even clear in my own mind, to be honest. But it wasn’t at the start – I still couldn’t even understand the matter.”
“The start” here means February 2017, when Daphne Caruana Galizia revealed the company, though not the owner.
He honestly forgot, eh? No one else forgot. They remembered the circumstances quite clearly when, in November 2018, this newspaper revealed that Fenech was the owner.
Paul Apap Bologna, one of Fenech’s partners at the Electrogas trough, remembered the board asking questions after Fenech’s identity as the owner was revealed by this newspaper.
Brian Tonna, whose firm, Nexia BT, had opened the Panama companies for Schembri and Mizzi, remembers telling Schembri that he was disgusted.
Muscat’s communications chief, Kurt Farrugia, was disturbed enough – he told the Caruana Galizia inquiry – that he went to Muscat to ask whether Fenech really owned 17 Black.
Muscat told him: “Ask Schembri.” Schembri, in turn, told Farrugia: “Maybe.”
Does Muscat not remember if he had already asked Schembri at this point, 21 months after Caruana Galizia’s revelations? If he knew, why did he avoid telling his communications chief, who clearly needed to know because the revelations risked destabilising the government?
Usually, that kind of silence is itself a lie. In this scenario, Muscat would have given a misleading statement to let Schembri come up with an answer that, if later shown to be a lie, would not embroil Muscat directly. (And Schembri had already lied publicly, months before, saying he didn’t know who 17 Black belonged to.)
In another scenario, in November 2018 Muscat hadn’t asked Schembri. Indeed that is what he was telling the press. Journalists wanted to know and Muscat’s stock reply was that he hadn’t asked and didn’t see the need to ask.
It was never a matter of simply not asking. It was an active resistance to asking – despite public and international suspicions of corruption in the very heart of Castille.
In what kind of world does a government communications chief have an urgent need to find out but the prime minister does not? Why wasn’t Muscat being as energetic as his communications aide in finding out?
Joseph Muscat’s amnesia is in its way revealing- Ranier Fsadni
Muscat says that he just couldn’t understand at that point. How come? The entire world – the media, the opposition, his own communications chief – was explaining the implications.
Muscat’s amnesia is in its way revealing. He told Grech that he didn’t know at the start but, otherwise, he couldn’t remember exactly when. But, less than a year ago, he told the public inquiry (p. 202 of the report) something equally non-committal but different: “I did ask Keith Schembri, who was my subordinate, after all this came out and he reiterated that it was a matter of commerce between the two of them and he told me it had nothing to do with Electrogas.”
“After all this came out.” So was that February 2018, when Schembri denied publicly he knew who owned 17 Black? In which case, Muscat immediately knew privately that Schembri was compromising his government by lying.
Or was it November 2018? After Farrugia was fobbed off with a “Maybe”? In which case Muscat knew then that Schembri had lied months previously. But he retained him and told the world he found him a person of integrity.
The inquiry board says that, at a minimum, Muscat should have formally reported the matter to the police with the request for urgent investigation, if nothing else because the revelations threatened to undermine the stability of the country’s governance.
As, indeed, they eventually did.
But Muscat says he was always given explanations by Schembri and Mizzi. Yes, Farrugia, too, was given explanations – but he all but told the board that he doesn’t believe them today.
No one believes them and they’re all ready to say so publicly. George Vella, as president, spoke of a gang in Castille. It’s even the ruling narrative of the Labour Party that the government was infiltrated by crooks out to profiteer.
Muscat says he won’t pass judgement. He’ll let time tell. But time has already told – on a number of crucial points, at any rate.
He says he won’t dump on Schembri just because he’s “flavour of the month”. That’s a bogus excuse. People have been asking him questions about Schembri for the last five and a half years.
They ask not because they want Muscat to “dump” on Schembri. They want to know what Muscat knew and when he knew it because that information will reveal a lot about Muscat himself.
And that’s why Muscat fudges the timeline. Any answer would raise further points, obvious questions demanding committal answers.
So he says he can’t possibly tell us what he knows. And, anyway, he’s honestly forgotten when he knew it.