It’s a scandal in its own right. The prime minister has been silent before two grave accusations levelled in recent weeks – one against Keith Schembri, a former Labour prime minister’s closest aide, the other against Carmen Ciantar, the most important aide of Robert Abela’s own deputy prime minister.

Schembri has been accused – by Ram Tumuluri, the former frontman for Vitals Global Healthcare (VGH) – of mob-style threats of violence and an oblique admission of involvement in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination.

Ciantar and her daughter have been accused – in journalistic hit-pieces surfacing in Pakistan and Brussels – of involvement in significant corruption in, once more, the VGH deal.

Both Ciantar and Schembri have categorically denied the accusations. Ciantar has gone further, saying the real target is her boss, Chris Fearne, in an attempted frame-up.

Remember, both sets of accusations concern crimes alleged to have occurred in Malta and affect the country’s reputation, not just Ciantar’s and Schembri’s. But, as of the time of writing, Abela has remained silent.

In a country where politicians express solidarity at the drop of a pin (if necessary, with both the pin and the floor), we’ve heard no words of comfort about a possible frame-up of his own deputy. Nothing about getting to the bottom of it.

And, in a country that was rocked internationally when accusations of political involvement in Caruana Galizia’s assassination first arose, our head of government declares nothing about asking the police to investigate the charges. Nothing about clearing Malta’s name for rule of law.

It’s true that both sets of accusations are scarcely credible. That makes the silence even more scandalous.

There are interesting conclusions to be drawn once you see how dubious the accusations are.

The charges against Ciantar are the most egregious. No known journalist claims the credit for the ‘revelations’, even though scoops are prized in the trade.

Cross-border investigations, such as those which were required in this case, usually call for collaboration between several different international media organisations. None here.

Not a single, non-Maltese reputable media organisation picked up the story as normally happens. Of course not. The ‘reports’ carried none of the usual evidence that bona fide journalists look for, such as scanned copies of e-mails or bank transactions.

The only evidence is of a serious effort to target Ciantar. Someone bothered to trawl through her daughter’s Instagram account and to find another Ciantar connected to a major audit firm.

Such details (together with details of her contract and relationship to Fearne) strongly indicate that the hidden purpose of the story was to end up in the Maltese media, even if the articles first surfaced elsewhere. There’s a Maltese agenda, not an international one.

Tumuluri’s accusations against Schembri call for a distinction between the threats of violence and the rest.

Government critics have long insisted on the criminal nature of the VGH deal- Ranier Fsadni

Multiple investigations – by Maltese authorities and media houses – have raised reasonable suspicions that the VGH deal was corrupt and that Schembri may have played a shadowy role in the deal. Schembri has done nothing to clear his name of these suspicions.

Tumuluri adds to them by claiming that he was muscled out of the hospitals concession by Schembri. This set of accusations is difficult to evaluate without police investigation. It is not obviously implausible.

But you don’t need a high regard for Schembri’s character to be sceptical about Tumuluri’s claim that Schembri levelled death threats against him.

According to Tumuluri, Schembri warned him to avoid ending up like Caruana Galizia. We’re also asked to believe, however, that some time earlier Schembri had also asked Tumuluri and others if they knew “anyone who could get rid of her”.

So Schembri goes, in a few months, from needing outside help to hire an assassin to making death threats against someone who, he believed, might be connected to professional killers. This part of the story doesn’t add up.

The lack of credibility of the two sets of accusations say a lot about Abela’s silence.

First, irrespective of who you believe, the accusations show that the VGH deal is mired in deep criminal filth, not just political corruption.

If you believe the stories, then there is something dark and sinister in the deal. But if you don’t believe them, then you must recognise that it takes a criminal mind to make them up. There must be important criminal interests at stake to attempt to frame the innocent.

That’s one reason why Abela is silent. He sees that, true or false, the accusations betray that the VGH deal was not just about maladministration. It’s about criminal activity.

He’s almost certainly known this for a long time. But he can’t speak up without revealing that he does know. By speaking, he risks losing plausible deniability.

Second, the accusation against Ciantar accepts, as a given, that the VGH deal was deeply corrupt. It simply draws our attention away from the Panama gang to point at someone else.

Government critics have long insisted on the criminal nature of the VGH deal. This time, however, it’s not an outside critic saying it. It’s someone who is or was once an insider.

Here’s the second reason why Abela is silent. The implication of the accusation is that Labour is harbouring a criminal (or criminals) – whether it’s Ciantar or, if she’s innocent, her hidden accuser.

So Abela remains silent like a lamb. Just as he remained scandalously silent when the US government stated that the Electrogas deal is mired in significant corruption, his lips remain sealed when Tumuluri tells the US authorities that the deal with Steward was a takeover by the mob.

Abela can’t speak up without raising questions about who’s the wolf.