The comments around Graffiti’s action at the Planning Authority this week are so loaded with irony that the young guys who took that action must feel perfectly entitled to feel pride for what they did. One remark was classic MDA. Developers speak like Frankenstein’s monster in the Boris Karloff classics: why don’t people realise he’s [...]
Godfrey Leone Ganado analyses Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perception Index and highlights some important conclusions: To start with, corruption is generally defined as “the misuse of public power for private benefit”. In its summary, the Report highlights that Malta’s ranking dropped from an average ranking of 38th between 2004 and 2015, dropping to 47th in [...]
Sometimes we have to spell the basics out. I've seen online trolls reacting to the news that Cambridge Analytica harvested 6,000 Facebook accounts from Malta speak like the proper idiots they are. One retort is 'why be too bothered about 6,000 accounts when Labour's majority was of 40,000?' The logic -- oh what a mistaken [...]
“The Conscience in Media award recognizes journalists who knowingly have endured great personal costs while pursuing the highest tenets of their profession,” says Sherry Beck Paprocki, president of ASJA. This selective award has been presented only twelve times since 1975. This is no fetishistic album of cuttings of awards and prizes given to a favourite [...]
More evidence is emerging that Cambridge Analytica harvested data from Malta Facebook accounts. Why did it need it? Because it could profit from using that data by providing services to a client here. Cambridge Analytica and its mother company SCL have a very specific type of client: political parties or political candidates. Someone in Malta [...]
Police in Montenegro are quoted by the local press saying they believe that a car bomb that exploded in front of the home of Montenegrin journalist Sead Sadiković on April 1 was a targeted threat. Sead Sadiković is known for a critical weekly TV show reporting on corruption and organized crime in Montenegro. He escaped the explosion [...]
From the Irish Times: "According to the US indictment, it seems as though Ali Sadr was living a double life. At the same time as he was allegedly orchestrating the financial links between Iran and Venezuela, he also set about establishing a bank in Malta." If you haven't found a copy of the Financial Times [...]
The temptation is not to write about it again because it's been said before. The greater temptation is not to read about it again. Rewind to pre-2013. Reading about Malta in the world news was rare but mostly fun. We rarely looked forward to the football reports on the international news because Malta was worth [...]
KPMG’s attempt at auto-absolution just does not work. It’s your bog standard ‘We did what we were supposed to do but we can’t be specific in answer to any question because we owe our customer the protection of their secrets’. KPMG may or may not see what’s happening here. They may or may not have [...]
Or everybody should be. They give an in-depth account this morning of what Ali Sadr appears to have been up to before and while being an owner and a Chairman of a Maltese bank. It now turns out one other director of Pilatus Bank, Mustafa Cetinel, was also investigated by the US probe that led [...]
Mehdi Shamszadeh, currently waiting in a Tehran prison for a hearing of his appeal from a death sentence for defrauding the Iranian government, was in 2004 commercial director of Iran’s shipping line IRISL when it decided to fire its Malta shipping agent SMS and switch to an agency set up by John Dalli’s daughter, Claire [...]
The sullen tone of HSBC Malta's CEO in his speech of last January may have been better informed than any of us were. Head office might be reversing the bank's 20 year growth drive and Malta might very well be for the chop. This Bloomberg report specifically mentions Malta as a candidate for HSBC's global [...]
#Occupyjustice are getting more than their fair share of Labour trolls on their Facebook posts, particularly the ones promoting the vigil of the 16th April. But they give back as much as they get. Have a good one Jack. Two if you can make it.
Kurt Farrugia does not get much cause to celebrate these days. The response of the Ambassadors’ Club at the Council of Europe to questions from a Dutch MP sitting in the Parliamentary Assembly gave him some sort of platform. It’s not that hard to understand how this works. An Opposition MP in the Maltese Parliament [...]
By George Smiley: On the 3rd of April 1993, Sylvia King was burnt alive in her car, undoubtedly, one of the most horrendous murders ever. I was still a 5 year old boy when Sylvia was killed, but my mother knew her at the time and had to explain to me that she is now [...]
Using his Australia trip to announce his intention to allow Maltese living abroad to vote in national elections is not a coincidence. With Joseph Muscat nothing is. His remark, on an ethnic radio show in Maltese for Maltese-Australian listeners, was addressed to a very specific audience: Maltese-Australians. The context of his remark was a follow-up [...]
The petition to have the Archbishop of Malta removed if he does not resign of his own accord has been bumped off Change.org. Facebook and other social media outlets have enough problems as it is with people using it as a vehicle for Fake News. The blatant lie that the Archbishop said the provenance of [...]
EU, US and Canada planning security clampdown on passport holders from countries that sell citizenship. Security concerns about acquirers of passports from third party small island states are reported to have caused major jurisdictions to review their immigration protocols and revise the face value status of holders of passports from these countries as ‘high risk’. [...]
16th April. Be there. https://www.facebook.com/occupyjusticemalta/videos/437683163339767/
It’s all well and good for the MFSA to assure us that its regulatory function was fully exercised while Pilatus Bank was in business. (See their statement below). They tell us they engaged an overseas “intelligence” firm before licensing Pilatus and they kept the bank on a diet of inspections and verification while it exercised [...]