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organisations have expressed relief that the draconian proposals the government first put forward have been partially withdrawn after the opprobrium they raised.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. [...]
Yesterday’s parliamentary question from Godfrey Farrugia asking the prime minister whether the government was considering accepting crypto-currencies to sell passports was a smart question indeed. He got an unambiguous response from the prime minister. “No” the government is not planning to sell passports for bitcoins. Why is the question significant? Vanuatu is a micro-state that [...]
Here's the third part of an interview Ellen Trapp of German ARD TV and myself had with whistle-blower Jonathan Ferris where he speaks on why he thinks the Attorney General has tried to silence him and why he was fired unfairly. He also speaks on why he thinks there has been a cover-up to suppress [...]
Admittedly he's not known for being the sharpest knife in the drawer. But I have not heard any of Etienne Grech's colleagues correct him for letting slip what in their heart of hearts the Labour government feel about our democracy. Labour MP Etienne Grech yesterday declared that in his view there was "too much freedom [...]
Norman Lowell went on a trip to Bavaria on what he describes as a "spiritual and political pilgrimage". He peered from the mountain top views enjoyed by his "hero" Adolf Hitler. Then he posed with a bust of Adolf Hitler and smiled inanely like some people pose with a wax replica of the pope at [...]
This is the second part of the interview I and Ellen Trapp of German ARD TV did to Jonathan Ferris. In this portion of the Ferris Tapes, Jonathan Ferris speaks of how an attempt was made by the authorities to involve him in an effort to discredit whistle-blower Maria Efimova who first spoke of payments [...]
Keith Schembri should accept the invitation of the European Parliament’s delegation coming to Malta this week to answer their questions on what he knows about corruption and money laundering. He has already twice dodged the PANA committee on two visits, causing embarrassment to the his boss the prime minister, the government he leads, the party [...]
By Godfrey Leone Ganado, who here reminds us of the many outstanding questions on the third Panama company and asks some new ones. The two declarations of trust dated 20 August 2015, which were in the kitchen-safe at Pilatus Bank as alleged by whistle-blower Maria Efimova, are both allegedly held by the subscribers to the [...]
I interviewed Jonathan Ferris about his experience investigating corruption and money laundering at the Police and the FIAU from which he was summarily dismissed. In this first part of the interview, Jonathan Ferris speaks of direct Ministerial interference in police investigations and of resource starvation for investigations into crimes committed by high profile people in [...]
Sueddeutsche Zeitung reports the German federal procesutor is passing to the Malta police all information connected to Malta in some 3 terabytes of data from Mossack Fonseca servers purchased from an unknown source and leaked separately earlier in 2017, over a year after the ICIJ leaked the Panama Papers. The Munich prosecutor spent 2 million [...]
William Lewis, Segretarju Organizzattiv of the Labour Party, and recently commissioned by direct order for government works in Birżebbuġa is a veteran beneficiary of architectural engagements of government work without the bother of a competitive process to allow others better than him at the job a chance to make an offer. The quality of his [...]
I wrote yesterday how Malta Today carried an endorsement of Malta’s passport scheme from a Peter Vincent, introduced to the reader as a lawyer at Thomson Reuters. I also wrote how Malta Today did not inform readers, Peter Vincent resigned in a major scandal in the US federal immigration agency he was lead lawyer in [...]
From my The Sunday Times article today: "As with the counter-intuitive Brexit vote, the institutional collapse in Kenya, the breakdown of the Opposition in Grenada and other micro-States, explanations of the political realities of Malta on the back of conventional voting behaviour analyses are becoming insufficient. Nothing is what it seems when the real decisions [...]
Interviews carried today by London's The Times with Jonathan Ferris and Maria Efimova show just how whistle-blowers are made to feel by the government of this country. It is clear that the intimidation campaign against journalists in Malta, culminating in the explosive annihilation of Daphne Caruana Galizia, were addressed to sources who provide information to [...]
Malta Today carried an endorsement of Malta’s passport scheme from a Peter Vincent, introduced to the reader as a lawyer at Thomson Reuters. With that brand name he is introduced as a respectable authority whose endorsement is clearly intended to improve the credibility of the due diligence process conducted by Identity Malta to vet people [...]
In spite of all the talk of leaving the investigations to run their course before pronouncing judgement, the government has had a theory about who killed Daphne Caruana Galizia and it has been briefing the international press on that theory with a nudge and a wink couching a cover-up as a genuine tip-off. But a [...]
The Nationalist opposition continues to bleed from wounds of its own making. Adrian Delia’s arguments in Parliament, defending a motion his party proposed to re-introduce dscimination in working conditions for people resorting to IVF treatments not permitted in Malta, were shallow and unconvincing. He argued the motion was making a “legal” point, not a “moral” [...]
The Government Gazette is not designed to make fascinating reading. That's no reason to miss it. Here's a seemingly innocuous notice in the gazette today that William Lewis was given a direct order for 12,000 euro. It's not going to be enough for him to retire on. But why was he given the purely technical [...]
The government is sending chilling signals to the academic community in Malta. It is not to be taken as a given that government actually intends to go ahead with its proposal of reducing the rector of the university to a clerk by invitation of a committee directly set up by government. There is a pattern [...]