We have moved from “misrepresentation” to “outright lie”. Minister Konrad Mizzi has become a specialist in libel law. It is a standard in the Maltese game of politics and carries with it the public assumption that “since X has resorted to the courts then X must be right”. It is not how it should be, it is not what the institutes of libel and slander were set up to protect but hey, no Maltese politician in recent history has shied away from abusing of the law in this manner so why should Mr. Konrad?
“Mr. Konrad”, now there is a curious way of referring to a Minister – or anyone for that matter unless you are a slave on a cotton plantation in pre-emancipation US. Yet that is how Karl Cini of Nexia BT refers to the Unportfoglioed Minister in his correspondence to Mossack Fonseca. Cini is speaking to Mossack Fonseca about Mizzi’s PEP status and is also endeavouring to explain the “How many?” and the “Wherefrom? of the funds that will be eventually subject to movements to companies that are set up by Mossack Fonseca.
It is here that Mr. Konrad’s speech of “outright lies” finds a huge banana skin on which to slip and fall. Without playing the special investigator one can see why Konrad Mizzi finds himself in an immense schizophrenic conundrum. Why? Well over the same period of time there had to be two Konrad Mizzi’s:
The first Konrad Mizzi is the one who delegates Cini to contact Mossack Fonseca and set up a structure that requires a considerable amount of funds in order to justify its continued existence. That Konrad Mizzi has an interest to explain that he has quite a considerable amount of personal funds and also has an interest to downplay his role as a PEP. That is why Karl Cini stresses that “our legislation openly allows PEPs to hold shareholdings in other businesses”. So whether he is lying or saying the truth to Mossack Fonseca, Mizzi (through his agents at Nexia) would like the truth to seem that he is loaded with money coming from ventures that are legal notwithstanding his status as a PEP.
The second Konrad Mizzi is the one who was made Minister by Joseph Muscat. That Konrad Mizzi was at first supposed to be a wunderkind who earned loads-a-money while abroad (fuelled by the myth that “studja barra u hadem barra ergo qed jimpala l-liri“) and owned property/properties abroad and has an international family. That was the early story to explain why he needed an international structure involving a tax haven even though his overall worth amounted to a pittance (by multimillionaire tax haven standards). The second Mizzi wanted us to believe that the whole set up cost a couple of tens of euros (was it 90?) and that it was all about family planning.
You can begin to see the dilemma facing Konrad Mizzi. The documentation that is trickling out of the ICIJ Panamaleaks is slowly but surely pointing towards the Konrad Mizzi that one would expect to exist – one who either has or claims to have the kind of funds that justify such operations. The second Mizzi – Minister Mizzi – can give us as facts his Ministerial declarations of worth that obviously clash with declarations done in his own name by the first Konrad Mizzi.
So you see. Speaking about “outright lies” is dangerous in these circumstances. In the not so halcyon days of studying criminal law I still remember now Chief Justice Camilleri lecturing us about fraud and forgery. A forged document is one that “tells a lie about itself”, he would tell us. I wonder what kind of fraud or forgery would be one that yells that it’s an “outright lie”.
