https://youtu.be/h_q9EvPygYU

In an earlier post, I wrote about the reputational harm the current Satabank crisis is causing among end clients of our financial services activity. An expert in the gaming industry pointed out to me in a conversation this morning that I am underestimating the impact on the end users of the gaming industry as well. [...]

Up to this morning, Satabank, or the ‘competent person’ appointed by the regulator to take control of it, Ernst&Young, have not yet communicated to the bank’s clients any news about what’s happening to their money. This is causing increasing concern among customers who have been denied access to their funds since the MFSA’s order last [...]

Here’s a bulletin on The Great Restoration of The Great Siege Memorial. After the vigil of Tuesday 16th October an #occupyjustice activist, considerably nimbler than I am, went over the barricade to stick a picture of Daphne Caruana Galizia to the unwaxed plinth of the Memorial. A sort of smiling middle finger left for Owen [...]

The current situation at Satabank is being underestimated because its client base is mostly foreign and we don’t have typical Net or One phone-in callers with their salaries trapped inside. But though the political fallout of a freeze on transactions on a domestically-focused retail bank would be politically massive, the economic fall-out of the state [...]

I am not Martin Scicluna’s shadow and life’s too short to read all his drivel, let alone answer it. But you can see in his article of today, coupled with it Steve Mallia’s return from the shadows last Sunday, and a few other hints here and there of eloquent frenzy, a picture taking shape of [...]

This is now. It won't be there tomorrow. But we will be.

A portrait of Daphne Caruana Galizia made of etched and patinated metal was inaugurated today in the European Parliament press room a year after the Strasbourg conference room was named after the assassinated journalist. The portrait is the work of Marie Louise Kold, Danish metal artist who lives in Malmo, Sweden and in Malta. The [...]

So Owen Bonnici gave an account in Parliament of The Great Restoration of The Great Siege Memorial in Valletta. He said he spent €1,600 in three weeks worth of “cleaning the base, removing wax and oil stains, grouting and repairing of worn areas”. Assuming the materials came for free, and by the sound of the [...]

Google "Malta Today". This comes up. Without the red box of course. Maybe the real editor should have a word with Google.

Transparency International has awarded Daphne Caruana Galizia and Spanish whistleblower and campaigner Ana Garrido Ramos the 2018 Anti-Corruption Award. The awards were presented at a ceremony at the 18th International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Copenhagen this evening. Daphne Caruana Galizia’s son Matthew and husband Peter collected her award. Matthew Caruana Galizia said: “The bomb that [...]

This is a feature on German weekly DIE ZEIT. My translation: "The Useless Comparison: What is the prize money for the Nobel Prize this year? 860,682 euro. The equivalent of the price for 1.32 Maltese Passports. "Source: nobelprize.com (600,000 SEK at the exchange rate of 8 October 2018), Malta Individual Investor Programm Agency." We used [...]

Employees of the gaming industry are among the worst affected individuals by the current freeze on withdrawal from Satabank accounts. These employees are expats who were unable to use any other retail bank in Malta without insurmountable bureaucracy and restrictions on higher risk business. Satabank was considered as the go-to retail bank and new employees [...]

Karol Aquilina asked Joseph Muscat two weeks before the anniversary of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s death what his government was preparing to mark that anniversary. He replied today saying “the Caruana Galizia family have numerous times expressed their lack of confidence in the Maltese State. The State, therefore, respects this position”. So the government of Malta [...]

A reader wrote in to ask me if I felt vindicated after the Maltese regulator froze the operations of Satabank and after the police raided the bank last night. He asked me that because he remembered my piece of March 3rd last when I outed Satabank as a money-laundering operation, a criminal conspiracy that unlike [...]

I have given Sunday’s article by Steve Mallia some more thought. Here’s his Facebook post yesterday night saying he was moved to come out of retirement to write it. Here he is being complemented by his former colleague at The Sunday Times and his current business partner in the PR business they have together Ariadne [...]

The great political dynasties say the Kennedys and the Bushes, are famously careful to arrange marriages to further their political aims. They are the heirs of the numbered kings of old who married daughters and sisters to secure alliances and seal political pacts. The Labour Party's Alex Saliba got married this weekend. My sincere congratulations [...]