Malta Today published a photo they found on Facebook of one of the alleged second-hand car racketeers in an embrace with Robert Abela in the prime minister’s studio in Castille. It turns out Robert Abela used to be this guy’s lawyer. Robert Abela also used to be the lawyer of another alleged scammer regulated by [...]
Read Malta Today’s editorial that says that the issue of second-hand cars with manipulated odometers goes beyond the fraud perpetrated by the people selling the cars. There are ways to avoid the fraud and public officials have a role in doing that when conducting checks in port and again when an imported second-hand vehicle is [...]
Pope Francis’s speech to Maltese “dignitaries” earlier this year was famously censored by the national broadcaster who ignored the pontiff’s pointed remarks about the moral duty to fight corruption. May your commitment to eliminate illegality and corruption be strong, like the north wind that sweeps the coasts of this country. May you always [...]
An analysis by international NGO Global Witness and seen by UK newspaper The Independent, shows that shipowners flying EU flags of Malta, Cyprus and Greece, are making more money carrying Russian crude oil since the EU started its attempt to punish Vladimir Putin for his invasion of Ukraine. The exceptions negotiated so far by Europe’s [...]
Read this story on The Shift News. The website is reporting that Christian Borg who has been charged with kidnapping and is being investigated for using his car dealership as a money laundering racket has filed the cheapest offer for a tender issued by the government for leased cars for the personal use of judges, [...]
Inveterate tree-chopping Ian Borg posted on his Facebook wall his meeting with possibly the worst democratically elected head of state in the world right now, Jair Bolsonaro. There were a lot of quips about how Ian Borg must have flaunted his tree-destroying record with Bolsonaro who has made it easier for loggers to eat into [...]
From my article in the The Sunday Times today: "Political elites have a stake in convincing themselves and everyone else that the situation has improved and this is no longer a den of thieves but a modern country. Their motivation is perhaps the most obvious. Towards the end of 2019, Malta’s political class came close to [...]
Working conditions in the Rabat, Gozo court building are notoriously uncomfortable. Lawyers working there have gone on strike over cramped and humid conditions in an old building inside the Ċitadella wholly unsuitable for the purpose it serves. The centuries old building has not been modernised and only a major infrastructural overhaul that would require the [...]
One of the two unions representing police officers has warned it will not accept the findings of any inquiry into how Iosif Galea was allowed to travel while a European Arrest Warrant against him was in place, unless that inquiry was properly independent. The union said the matter would likely have an impact on some [...]
Victoria Buttigieg has security of tenure protected by the Constitution. This means that except for very exceptional reasons and on the back of cross-party Parliamentary consensus, no one can ever fire her. This is meant to ensure she acts independently of pressures from people who would otherwise be able to threaten her income or her [...]
This is not a website where you come for happy reading. It’s almost always dark, critical, sometimes even flirting with being cynical. So, here’s an exception. Yesterday the government produced a candidate to run the Planning Authority, a den of iniquity if ever there was one. He was grilled by Opposition MPs Karol Aquilina and [...]
I will start this appraisal of the accounts of the Dizz Group by referring to an article I wrote for this blog in November 2020 regarding the audited financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2019. In that post I explained how the value of two adjoining sites in Mrieħel’s ‘The Hub’ shot up [...]
In a statement issued this morning the Malta Police Union called for Attorney General Victoria Buttigieg to resign after the botched plea deal with Darren Debono, known as it-Topo, who had two charges for attempting to kill police officers withdrawn in exchange of evidence he did not give. Darren Debono is currently appealing a 10-year [...]
The police have told Times of Malta that the “investigation” into how Iosif Galea was allowed to travel out of Malta with Joseph Muscat despite a German arrest warrant they knew about for months would be “independent” and headed by a “retired judge”. That looks good. It’s meant to. It’s meant to rebuff the suggestion [...]