They had the pleasure of meeting Lawrence Cutajar yesterday. Their expectations were not high. Some of them had seen the video of his so called crime conference 4 days after Daphne Caruana Galizia's assassination. The others had heard descriptions of it. They visited Lawrence Cutajar yesterday and the engagement was so bad it was easier [...]
The Chief Justice received today the EP delegation who are on a fact-finding mission whether rule of law works in Malta. They just got their answer. It doesn't. Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri is reported to have told the Parliamentarians that in his view the police have, like the rest of us, seen enough evidence to [...]
When still Leader of the Opposition, Joseph Muscat asked Lawrence Gonzi to fire his chief of staff, Edgar Galea Curmi, for making a phone call to then Commissioner of Police John Rizzo. The story was around Cyrus Engerer who had recently switched parties from PN to Labour. He had made the switch in the context [...]
In 1995, the PN administration set up the Ombudsman. This would be an official with security of tenure appointed by cross-party consensus and reporting directly to Parliament. The Ombudsman would hear complaints of wrongful administration, unfairness in government decisions, injustices and discrimination. Without fear of retribution the Ombudsman would have the power to speak publicly [...]
I'm rarely distracted by the likes of Cyrus Engerer. Although to be fair there aren't many like Cyrus Engerer. He posted today his elaborate treatise on the secret agenda of the civil society activists invited by a cross-party European Parliament delegation headed by a Socialist to speak about rule of law in Malta. Here's his [...]
The eerie silence of Chris Cardona for weeks after the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia was unmistakably conspicuous. But his name came up in many conversations he was not part of in all this time. That was because, of all the measures of suppression Daphne Caruana Galizia suffered in her life, few were starker than Chris [...]
Look at the letter Marlene Mizzi sent to Manfred Weber to tell him "with all due respect that this is shameful letter, offensive to the State of Malta and to the majority of Maltese people". A political commentary about Marlene Mizzi's endemic confusion between the State of Malta and the majority of the Maltese people [...]
Sometimes some of us have unrealistic expectations. I've had many conversations with people who seemed to think that the EU should send an army to invade Malta, put Joseph Muscat in handcuffs and grant us a new constitution. That thinking is just as colonial as the conformist compliance you come across from people that tell [...]
Minister Michael Farrugia knows just which door to knock to get his policemen to act as instruments of an autocratic regime. Labour's campaign to take-over the police force had various stages. First they decapitated the corps and put on top a blabbering fool. Then they strategically promoted cronies to top positions they were not qualified [...]
The government is claiming Jonathan Ferris is under police protection. Up to the time of this post, this is simply not true. Jonathan Ferris is taking considerable risk in the interest of his country. He has been treated unfairly by a government he is suing. And yet, because unlike the government he can distinguish between [...]
Nexia International is the international network of accountancy and advisory firms that includes Brian Tonna's Nexia BT of Malta. Yesterday I tweeted a link to my blog post arguing that Keith Schembri, Konrad Mizzi and Brian Tonna themselves should, if they have nothing to hide, instruct Nexia BT to meet the European Parliament delegation currently [...]
Carmelo Abela is nobody’s least favourite Labour Minister. He certainly is not mine. He’s not alleged to have secret companies in off-shore jurisdictions. He’s not alleged to have visited brothels while on government duty. He’s not known to have threatened whistle-blowers with prison. He’s not suspected of having facilitated fabrication of documents to help illegal [...]
This is the fourth and final portion of an extended interview I had with whistle-blower Jonathan Ferris. For this portion, Ellen Trapp from ARD TV and myself took Mr Ferris in front of the building that houses Pilatus Bank. I asked Mr Ferris questions he could not answer because of the secrecy obligations that still [...]
Once again Nexia BT, the firm of the prime minister's accountant at the heart of the Panama scandal, will not be answering questions of a second European Parliament motion to Malta. Brian Tonna is citing professional secrecy. Let us be clear. Technically he is correct. An accountant is not even allowed by law to confirm [...]
This is a statement by independent Azerbaijan journalists organisation Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety. They list the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia in a list of crimes perpetrated against journalists who investigated the Azerbaijani regime: Azerbaijani Authorities Should Put an End to Impunity for Crimes against Journalists The Institute for Reporters’ Freedom and Safety [...]
Yet another Labour Minister conflates government with parliament. Michael Farrugia today claims he is protected by parliamentary privilege from the criticism of a family that has lost their wife and mother to political assassination six weeks ago and have seen nothing from the government except signs of an orchestrated attempt to cover up what really [...]
Etienne Grech has been crowned "Il-Ministru tas-Sawt" an extra-constitutional honorofic which the Labour government appears to reserve to the more embarrassing in its ranks. His predecessor Silvio Parnis was no Nobel laureate. But if half the army got promoted before the last election and the other half got medals for being there, why shouldn't the [...]
Compare what goes on in this polity, where state, government and party are indistinguishable and like something from the council of Nicaea that indivisible trinity is personified in Joseph Muscat, and other normal democracies. A policeman whistle-blower in Ireland clear his throat to accuse the force that employed him of corruption. To cover themselves his [...]
The government has been awarding itself medals for faint praise it has received for the new press law it is piloting through parliament. International rights organisations have expressed relief that the draconian proposals the government first put forward have been partially withdrawn after the opprobrium they raised. The sense of relief that the fascist disaster [...]
In the interview he gave us, Jonathan Ferris spoke of his involvement in the Libya visa scam investigations. He described a container of documents being delivered to him and a bunch of policemen reporting to him sifting through heaps of paperwork. Until they gave up and were taken off the case to investigate something else. [...]