Angelo Gafà denies covering up pre-emptive pardons to Pilatus Bank officials identified for prosecution by a magistrate. That’s despite the explicit evidence to the contrary published in Robert Aquilina’s new book. In internal email exchanges police officials debate what reasons they need to conjure to justify their decision to let the suspects walk.

The only possible ‘categorical’ denial is to say the emails shown in Aquilina’s book are fabrications but not even Angelo Gafà can lie like that.

So, he promises Malta Today to explain himself “in the respective fora, including in ongoing judicial proceedings.”  Malta Today doesn’t say what those judicial proceedings are, so I shall have to.

The statement ‘we’ll speak in court’, coming from a cop, suggests appropriate and professional conduct. A certain type of old school investigator or prosecutor would not ‘waste time’ speaking to journalists, would shy away from the limelight, and would just do their job in court, presenting the evidence, and slamming crooks in jail.

But that’s not what’s happening here. The whole point here is that the police and the attorney general did not initiate judicial proceedings. The proceedings that do exist were initiated by Repubblika precisely for the purpose of complaining that the police and the attorney general did not initiate the proceedings where the evidence published in Aquilina’s book would have been used to convict criminals.

Why would Angelo Gafà use those proceedings as cover to avoid explaining the damning evidence that his force is covering up for high-end criminals? Because the attorney general has fought tooth and nail to ensure the proceedings are held behind closed doors. He will ‘explain’ but you’ll never know what he’s said.

Perhaps we’re mixing metaphors but ‘covering up’ a crime and explaining oneself ‘behind closed doors’ amount to one and the same thing. This is a cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up.

One of the Proverbs says that ‘Sinners can’t sleep until they do what is evil’. Maybe it is from there we get the Maltese idiom that sin itself never goes to bed. Like little panicky Macbeths these corrupt officials are digging deeper holes in which to bury their misdeeds, but the holes are too deep for them to climb out of.

This will get worse. Watch them show just how capable they could have been to arrest and prosecute the Pilatus gang if they wanted to. They will show how heavy their hammer is when they choose to wield it. They will show what ends they can get to when they’re forced out, by the power of words alone, from behind their comforting closed doors.