Tag: Keith Schembri

Categories
Mediawatch Politics Rule of Law

Frozen too late

On this night when the news broke of the freezing of assets of Keith Schembri, Brian Tonna and others we need to take a step back and realise that the information that led to this action has been in the public domain for at least three years.

On April 24th 2017, Daphne Caruana Galizia published a post entitled “BREAKING/Prime Minister’s chief of staff took kickbacks from Brian Tonna on sale of Maltese citizenship”. In that post, as the title describes, she detailed fact upon fact of how Keith Schembri had received kickbacks from Brian Tonna on the sale of citizenship.

The ball, you could say, was in the AG’s court. Action could and should have been taken. Instead we all know what would happen. Nothing. No prosecutions. No investigations. Keith Schembri would remain a key figure in disgraced PM Muscat’s kitchen cabinet and Brian Tonna’s Nexia would feature in many a government contract or consultancy until yesterday.

And Daphne Caruana Galizia would be murdered.

Reading this comment by Daphne has a spine-chilling effect. It thunders from beyond the grave and reverberates in our heads. There you have it. She knew that publishing these facts would not be enough. She knew that the police would do nothing with this evidence.

“It’s the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, so they’re not going to touch him.” Daphne was one of the select few who were aware at the time of the system of impunity that was already in place. Institutions had by then already been bent into submission. The saga was only about to begin.

Action by the police at the time might have prevented the disastrous vortex that was to follow.

Daphne Caruana Galizia began to die that night. She did not have to, but the nation was too blind to realize the possible consequences of this kind of revelation. Blinded by partisan bickering and by government propaganda the people would only serve as a fertile ground for institutional breakdown.

And murder.

This is what justice for Daphne is also about. We are a long way from that yet.

ADDENDUM:
This is how the lying lowlife scum reacted at the time. Thanks to @bugdavem on Twitter for the reminder.

Categories
Zolabytes

Panamagate: Labour’s Fell Swoop

fell swoop _ akkuza

Occam’s Laser is a long-time J’Accuse reader who works in the financial services sector. In this article Occam argues that Labour is willfully muddying the waters over Panamagate, exploiting the concerns of conscientious liberals to further its own agenda.

The Labour Party is desperate. For three months it has tried to brazen out Panamagate, but despite its survival of various protests, no confidence motions and other crises, the issue simply won’t go away. Now it is hoping that by tarring the whole Maltese professional class with the same brush, it will cause enough of a distraction for people to start talking about something, anything, but Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri’s egregious misdemeanors.

This is clear from the recent PL attacks on Tonio Fenech and the private sector companies he works for, the attacks on the law firm EMD and its consultant Richard Cachia Caruana, and its general bewildering aggression towards any PN leaning individual somehow involved in financial services. What PL is trying to do is obvious; they want to conflate public concern about the disparate issues of global tax avoidance and its own internal governance disasters in order to dissipate public outrage. This is yet another of the PL’s dirty tricks, and the public shouldn’t allow the PL to wave this red herring in its face with impunity.

To start off with, Malta’s strategic decision to become a financial services centre is one which enjoyed (and below the surface, still enjoys) broad cross-party consensus. So PL is being maliciously disingenuous when it feigns getting its knickers in a twist over this week’s various pseudo-revelations. Secondly, while there is no denying the inherent link between a world order that allows international corporate secrecy, and the exploitation of that secrecy by persons such as Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri, the two problems require radically different solutions.

Regarding the problem of international tax avoidance, this is one which requires, at the international level, a global co-operation and a deep philosophical rethinking of the way the world works; and at the local level, a careful repositioning of Malta as a jurisdiction which adds value beyond its low tax base (this is already the case to some extent, but a truly well intentioned government could do much more to improve things). This is going to be a big, slow job.

The Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri situation, on the other hand, is a pressing governance catastrophe that requires urgent and immediate action. Every day they hold on to their position, they cause irreparable harm to our reputation, and indeed deprive us of the valuable time that we need to reposition and further diversify our economy.

Perhaps the most galling thing about this PL manouvre is the way it exploits the feelings and concerns of the country’s most conscientious individuals, those who genuinely worry about things like global inequality and corporate ethics, turning these noble concerns into tools to further its own ends. Worryingly, we’ve already seen PL try to exploit the concerns of the conscientious before, as with that other red herring about Joseph Muscat supporting gay marriage a few weeks ago. This is shockingly unscrupulous behaviour; the Maltese public deserves better, and PL shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

*****
Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 10 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
***

Categories
Corruption Panamagate

The Price of Time

the price of time _ akkuza

Take a step back. Try to disentangle your brain from the bombshell of Panamagate as it unfolded in Malta. Now take a look at Prime Minister Muscat and his reaction to the whole business over the last seven weeks. In Malta Panamagate came early, probably prematurely. Konrad Mizzi got an early warning of the dangers to come when Caruana Galizia dropped some hints about the information that had come to her possession. “The lamb for Easter would come from New Zealand” was the coded message that set alarm bells ringing in Mizzi’s head. Mizzi had been handed an unexpected advantage – unlike the bigger heads that were to be shaken on the night of Sunday 3rd April he had been handed a lifeline from the quarters he’d least expect. Mizzi and Muscat had been gifted a precious amount of time to work on a defence.

Time. That’s the point here. Timing was crucial and every minute gained to work on the alibi was worth a mountain of gold. Nexia BT, Brian Tonna, Keith Schembri, Kasco, Panama, New Zealand, Adrian Hillman, more Konrad Mizzi. The news trickled out slowly as Caruana Galizi’s blog turned gatekeeper of the leaked information for a period of time – at least until the international bomb would explode thanks to Süddeutsche Zeitung and ICIJ.

This gift was a godsend for Muscat and Mizzi. We were regaled with the “declaration of assets”, the “family planning” and the “full collaboration” stories. Muscat could sit and watch and do what he does best: gauge public opinion. Better still he could shift the goalposts of assessment. It would no longer be about the existence of a structure using jurisdictions that have a notorious and shady reputation. It would become a case of whether money would be found in Panama or New Zealand. Muscat would skilfully manipulate the discussion until the question of Mizzi’s suitability as minister (and Schembri’s as Chief Advisor) would hinge only on whether any corruption could be proven.

It’s not the point really. Put simply both the Minister and the Chief of Staff should have resigned the moment it is was clear that they set up companies in dubious and shady jurisdictions. Whether there is any money to be found (and so much time lapsed till the international machine would actually be set in motion that it is doubtful whether any money would have stayed put so long) is irrelevant. The Panama Papers have shown that. Once the news was out, politicians the world over were slammed with big question marks on their head. The responsible politicians among them have already borne the consequences. And Konrad and Keith?

Konrad and Keith had the benefit of time on their side. The parameters of the discussion had already been shifted with the artful use of propaganda and party machinery. The question had already become whether or not any money would be found. Muscat had managed to shift it all to the far-fetched finding of a smoking gun. One wonders whether Konrad and Keith would have survived the onslaught had their names figured for the first time along with the rest of the ICIJ releases and not a good seven weeks before.

Which is not to say that both Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri are out of trouble. In any decent democracy they would already have been long gone. A decent Prime Minister would have distanced himself from members of his entourage who opt to create such structures in dubious jurisdiction for whatever reason and with whatever intent. He’d do it for his sake and for the sake of his party in government.

Muscat still needs to buy time. The rumblings within his own party must not be comforting. The Süddeutsche Zeitung journalists claim to have “several weeks” of news to release so the Panama Papers are not going to vanish overnight. The more politicians abroad fall thanks to these Papers the more pressure there is on Muscat and Mizzi’s “alibi” regarding the mythological hidden millions that are supposed to be hidden or absent.

Muscat needs to continue to buy time as he has done in previous scandals – notably the Manuel Mallia issue – the bonus time that he was graced with thanks to the early release of the information in Malta has run out. Now that the Panama Papers scandal is an international hot potato Muscat might find that buying time will become more costly. Distraction tactics, mud slinging on the opposition and fact twisting all have an expiration date.

He probably knows that when that time runs out he might find that the writing has been on the wall all along… that Mizzi and Schembri’s position is untenable and delaying the inevitable is disrespectful to the electorate that put Muscat into power, including those who tried their luck for the first time.

Next time they might not be too audacious.