When Homer wanted to make his audience feel giddy at the display of military power, he gave a seemingly infinite list of Greek forces spreading out along the seashore under the gaze of the terrified Trojans.
We feel a similar dizziness on reading the long list of secret offshore companies, and companies within companies, and of the myriad money transfers, divided, sub-divided and invoiced in serpentine trails in the charges brought against Keith Schembri and his cronies, who stand accused of plundering several of our vital national institutions.
The nausea is now intensified. This newspaper has identified the secret owner of the notorious Macbridge, the company that was to pay millions of euros to Schembri and Konrad Mizzi. The owner is Cheng Chen, who negotiated the deal in which a third of Enemalta was bought by Shanghai Electric Power and the Montenegro wind farm deal, which saw Enemalta fleeced.
It was five years ago that Daphne Caruana Galizia revealed that Brian Tonna, of Nexia BT, had opened another secret company for Chen in the British Virgin Islands. It was around the time he was setting up companies for himself while restructuring others for three men now facing charges of corruption: Schembri, Adrian Hillman (former managing director of Allied Group) and Malcolm Scerri (Schembri’s business partner).
Monday’s revelations went round the world in under an hour. But the experience of the outside world looking at us from afar, through a telescope, is not the same as ours, seeing it from up close. We are staggered by the revelations but, from afar, we look as though crime is part of our way of life, all the way up to the top.
Imagine the view for someone who can only see the big picture. They see five-year-old revelations making it to court only now. The implications were clear then. The need for swift action was obvious. Yet, the demand was dismissed as malicious. Bogus principles were invoked to justify no action. Those “principles” were still being invoked a few months ago, by sitting cabinet ministers to the Caruana Galizia inquiry.
Indeed, after Yorgen Fenech was named as the owner of the secret company 17 Black, some Labour politicians saw nothing wrong in continuing to communicate with him. One of them is the justice minister. Yet, the prime minister tells the public he sees nothing wrong; his personal red line is communication with Fenech after his arrest (an impossibility, since no one can WhatsApp a man in police custody).
The prime minister himself refuses to sack the tourism chief, who was discovered, while still in charge of the Planning Authority, to have offered to go into business with Fenech.
Nor has he sacked the education minister, who awarded a senseless but lucrative contract to a special friend. He’s cancelled the contract but the minister, who’s already had to resign once, serves on.
And he appointed to run the Central Bank a man who, while finance minister, put salary over principle when confronted by a major deal that looked sleazy. He was indignant at the idea that he should have resigned.
Can you blame someone who looks through the telescope and concludes these are not exceptions but the rule, implemented from the top?
Robert Abela looks like a child playing battleships, proud he’s a sea captain, while a real ship sinks
The Malta Gaming Authority is supposed to crack down on money laundering. But three top officials helped Fenech avoid scrutiny. One of them is now working for the Malta Financial Services Authority, and (up till Tuesday morning) neither she nor her bosses have reacted to the revelations. You’d think they’d consider them damaging. Apparently not.
Despite the mounting evidence of the mercenary character of many key persons of trust, the justice minister is still pushing a law that would invest persons of trust with the authority to impose crippling financial penalties on individuals and companies, bypassing the courts and the constitution.
Our international observer swallows hard and swings the telescope to survey more of the landscape. He finds that the former police commissioner and his deputy are suspected of complicity with organised crime.
He swings some more. He finds that no fewer than four ministers have been publicly accused of either robbing an ordinary member of the public or literally robbing a bank.
One former junior minister is accused of making off with tens of thousands of someone else’s cash. Another, a full cabinet minister, has been accused of cheating a vulnerable old man (and his heirs) of a valuable piece of land. The courts pour scorn on the minister’s version; yet, the minister remains in office.
A third unnamed minister is accused of being part of a failed bank heist. A former deputy leader of the reigning party is named as the mastermind.
Yes, the accusations of bank robbery are based on hearsay at this stage; the former junior minister denies wrongdoing. But, remember, the international observer is seeing the big picture, not the details of process, dates and names. It’s all filed under “Malta”, a country where four government politicians can, in the space of a few months, be accused of robbery.
No wonder tourism operators report having queries asking if Malta is safe for them to visit, gaming companies report higher costs and loss of earnings and employers complain of the damage, whether or not we muddle our way through the Moneyval report.
Meanwhile, the prime minister retorts to any needling question by saying he’s still waiting for the opposition leader to take action against this or that opposition MP. He may think he’s being robust. Through the telescope, however, he looks like a child playing battleships, proud he’s a sea captain, while a real ship sinks.