I’m not quite sure what the financial services regulator is waiting for to strike off Zenith, Matthew Pace’s rebranded financial services firm that helped Keith Schembri hide his money. They provided services for grandees like Robert Musumeci and Deo Scerri too but Matthew Pace slept hard last night because of Keith Schembri’s business.
Someone at the MFSA needs to be assuming some responsibilities though. We have a regulator that decides who is and who isn’t fit and proper to provide financial services so we are protected from cowboys and crooks. They sure got it wrong about Matthew Pace.
And they shouldn’t have had to because his manner of doing business was in the public domain. He was forced to resign from the Planning Authority when his ITS tower imbroglio was discovered when he worked to permit the development in St George’s Bay even as his private business was selling apartments on plan.
And then of course there’s the case that made it to court yesterday. It was discovered and documented by the FIAU five years ago. What did the FIAU do. Investigators lost their job, the reports were suppressed, the police sitting on its board or acted as liaisons with that agency – Silvio Valletta and Ian Abdilla – and the prosecutor himself who chaired its supervisory body – Peter Grech, covered the entire thing up.
Edward Scicluna went on TV and accused his own agents of writing the reports because they meant to leak them perpetrating a fraud and capturing innocent victims.
Edward Scicluna is Central Bank Governor. Over this case alone he should resign forthwith. An independent inquiry into the MFSA’s conduct should start the minute Zenith is struck off and its directors banned from financial services. And that minute should be now. Ian Abdilla should be dismissed from the police force immediately his medal withdrawn. And the attorney general should assess whether her predecessor’s manifest administrative responsibilities extend to wilful criminal complicity.