One of the largest news organisations in the world, the Associated Press, has asked the trial judge that released Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad not to keep sealed and secret documents filed by US prosecutors following Ali Sadr’s release. The documents were filed by the US attorney’s office in response to a court order when US [...]

Karol Aquilina raised an issue in parliament yesterday that may seem at first like a piece of administrative pedantry. In April 2020, the government announced the appointment of a new financial intelligence agency board for a 3-year term. The appointment followed the procedure required by the law regulating money laundering. So far so good. But [...]

The court has just completed an 11-month process of evaluating 117 objections raised by lawyers for Alfred and George Degiorgio and 7 objections raised by lawyers for Vince Muscat, who have been in preventive custody since they were charged in December 2017 for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia. The court also dismissed an objection [...]

Maybe it’s because I binged on the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, but I’m visualising this as a middle game on a chess board of a match I’m watching, but I’m not smart enough to guess where this will go. Times of Malta is reporting that the CEO of the financial regulatory body “suspended himself” [...]

A possible winner of a casual election to fill the seat of Frederick Azzopardi, who died recently, is Ryan Mercieca, the leading PN candidate in the sparse pool left to contest the seat. The Gozo electoral district had 11 candidates on the PN ticket in 2017. Chris Said is an MP. Marthese Portelli resigned her [...]

Why is the government so hostile to the idea of increasing the number of judges and magistrates? It is facile to say that such a move “wouldn’t solve everything”. Of course, it wouldn’t. Outside a chemistry lab there’s nothing you can add to anything that would change everything about something. Granted some judges are more [...]

Will clumsy functionaries paid by tax payers to make politicians look good on social media, please mind their fingers? I remember as a junior staffer helping out in the organisation of a visit by a Chinese Assistant Deputy Under Prime Minister or something, which from a country of more than a billion people is still [...]

A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. – C.S. Lewis Prime Minister Robert Abela is a proud man. He said it many a time during his two-hour reply to the leader of opposition’s [...]

A playboy casino owner with links to the underworld, a financial regulator, a gaming lawyer and a staffer for a banana republic’s prime minister walked into the lobby of the Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas ... Sounds like the beginning of a porn parody for a Scorsese classic. But what’s happening here is neither titillating [...]

Let the good times roll, Joe.  

If you provide professional advice on financial services, you must work within a published set of rules. You must prove you are trained and qualified to do the job, and if you’re caught acting unprofessionally you can be fined, or your license to provide the service is removed. This is done to protect your customers. [...]

When MFSA boss Joe Cuschieri travelled with Yorgen Fenech to a gaming shindig in Las Vegas in May 2018, he had left the Malta Gaming Authority just a few weeks before. In comments to the press yesterday he made it a point to clarify that he was no longer the gaming regulator when he travelled [...]

You could dismiss this One TV “story” as yet another small-time opportunity for Labour to pick on Jason Azzopardi, someone their people love to hate. But being a political party does not absolve them of their responsibilities to democracy, and we have gone too far down the road of tyranny if we stop worrying about [...]

Joe Cuschieri admitted yesterday that while serving as CEO of the Malta Financial Services Authority he travelled to Las Vegas with Yorgen Fenech to advise him on “regulatory issues”. The financial services regulator told The Malta Independent yesterday he gave his time and advice without payment or compensation. Joe Cuschieri is one of the two [...]

  The Malta Gaming Authority licensed a company owned by the Tumas Group, Oracle Gaming Shops Ltd, as a Type 1 Gaming Services company. The licensing was granted in 2020. Employees of Oracle Gaming Shops were told the company was set up to take over the gaming businesses that were run by Yorgen Fenech before [...]

Will every government minister, parliamentarian, regulator, police officer and sundry person who should have really known better who accepted Yorgen Fenech’s hospitality in the last three years or so, been on his plane though they weren’t his pilot, fucked him though they weren’t Mrs Fenech, driven him around though they weren’t his driver, cooked pasta [...]

Manuel Delia · Setting The Date The power of the prime minister to set any date they please within a 5-year term of a parliament to call a general election is another power the prime minister should not have. Rather nostalgically, they call it ‘the prime minister’s prerogative’. A word like prerogative should have no [...]

Photo: Matthew Mirabelli, Times of Malta Look at this Times of Malta interview with Robert Abela from 2 September. It was six months after Miriam Pace, 54, was killed when her Ħamrun house collapsed into a building site next door. Her husband, Carmel Pace, publicly complained that his wife’s death ‘had meant nothing [...]

People use numbers a lot. To measure time and to describe the weather; in school and at work; to count money, measure distances, reach phones open locks, read and flip through TV channels. Engineers use numbers to erect buildings and roll out roads. Doctors count cells and dose medicines. A few years back I wrote an article [...]

Manuel Delia · Go Back To Islamistan A history teacher in France was explaining to his students the true meaning of freedom of speech in a secular world. He showed them cartoons of Muhammad saying he was aware that this was a taboo for Muslims and they’d be offended by it. But freedom of speech [...]