At this stage it is important to refresh people’s minds about Keith Schembri’s company in the British Virgin Islands: Colson Services Limited.
It was unveiled by the Panama Papers leak and set up for Keith Schembri by Nexia BT. He had had it since January 2011, set up around the time that Joseph Muscat’s team were ramping up in full expectation of taking over Malta’s government any time Lawrence Gonzi’s government would stop wheezing and draw its last breath.
Though obviously Keith Schembri denies it, even the notoriously tolerant BVI authorities suspected this was a money laundering vehicle.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung reported around a month ago the BVI authorities investigated Colson Services in 2016 instructing Mossack Fonseca not to say a word to Keith Schembri his company was being investigated for money laundering.
Here’s a Times of Malta report from the time providing the facts.
Keith Schembri protested innocence going through the standard lines of reply.
First the story is “mostly recycled”. In that he presumably means the news of Colson had already broken when Panama Papers came out. Discovering more about it should, in his opinion, go unreported since its existence has come to the public domain.
Two points on that. First, Colson came to the public domain in spite of Keith Schembri not because of him. He did everything possible to hide it and then it was discovered.
Second, FYI, here’s that story being recycled, because you see, more is coming out on Colson and what Keith Schembri was doing with it. Watch this space.
Then Keith Schembri told Times of Malta “Colson had been incorporated years before his appointment as chief of staff which was confirmation his company structures had a ‘commercial scope’”.
Also two points on that. Perhaps, three.
First, what he intended to use it for when he set it up is no guarantee of what he would use it for after.
Second, if by commercial scope he means avoiding to pay tax on his business in Malta and defrauding the authorities by under-declaring profits in his business in order not to pay tax, then that too is a matter of public interest even if he was never appointed chief of staff. Of course the fact that he was chief of staff means that his tax dodging is even more a matter of public interest, not to mention interest to the authorities who should be putting him in handcuffs as he reads this.
Third, if I may, what commercial scope? Has Colson ever actually done anything?
Then Keith Schembri told Times of Malta the BVI inquiry “was not even brought to my attention”. He sounds surprised because in Malta he is used to policemen, secret service agents and anti-money laundering officers tipping him off. They did not do that in the BVI because that’s what’s supposed to happen.
And then the final quote from Times of Malta: “Mr Schembri said that was “’the proper function of rule of law,’ as he lashed out at Times of Malta, accusing it of the ‘assumption of guilt by mere implication.’”
Here’s the drill Mr Schembri. If you’re suspected of money laundering it is incumbent on you to prove your funds can be explained. That’s the law.
The law is such that if this wasn’t all-powerful El Kasco we were talking about the police would be on your tail pronto and the Attorney General would issue an investigation order under our own anti-money laundering laws to seize your money. But the police are politically captured and the attorney general has been walking around with a white flag on his back for the five years you’ve been sitting on him.
Although admittedly it’s time to refine the laws we have and introduce ‘unexplained funds’ provisions on the UK model. If you have money, and you can’t show where you got it from and why you have it, it’s taken away from you while you defend yourself in a court of law and then off to prison.
It does not matter if Keith Schembri’s $400,000 in January 2015 came from bribery, corruption or tax-dodging money laundering and fraud. If he can’t say why he has it, he shouldn’t have it. And he should not be a free man, let alone the prime minister’s chief of staff.
Incidentally has anyone heard him deny it yet?
