As MEPs resoundingly endorse the PANA committee's recommendation of an investigation into Pilatus Bank, Godfrey Leone Ganado analyses in-depth the multiple FIAU reports into the institution widely believed to be a money laundering engine for the Azerbaijan regime and Maltese political figures. He starts by providing extracts from relevant reports in order to pave the [...]

Malta Labour MEPs said today they were against any investigations into whether Nexia BT, the accountancy firm belong to the prime minister's accountant Brian Tonna, complied with money laundering regulations. This in spite of the fact that such investigation was called by the PANA committee that investigated and reported on the fall-out in Europe from [...]

Former Labour prime minister Alfred Sant told me today he wanted Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi to resign from office. But then he changed his mind. I was asking him questions at a press conference he was giving with his assistants Miriam Dalli and Marlene Mizzi, the first conference ever in the newly named Salle [...]

In its report on the Paradise Leaks, Le Monde interprets the leaks from Appleby to show that the company Joe Bannister “managed, misappropriated public funds from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD)”. This concerns a company registered in the British Virgin Islands that invested in a Russian mining company and applied and obtained [...]

What is it with this guy that whenever a matter of national importance comes up that he's not setting himself on the agenda he buys a First Class ticket for himself, Keith Schembri and Kurt Farrugia and goes to sell passports? While the European Parliament debates today the collapse of rule of law in Malta, [...]

I’m half way through a short trip to the European Parliament in Strasbourg as a guest of the President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani who asked a number of journalists from Malta to be present when the building’s main press hall is renamed Salle Daphne CARUANA GALIZIA in the presence of her family. Yesterday [...]

Financial investigations were ordered by the University of Malta into alleged malpractice and financial misconduct by Joe Mifsud, the “Mystery Professor” currently being named in connection with investigations into alleged Russian interference in the last US presidential elections. Ten days after I first asked them, the University of Malta has finally replied to questions regarding [...]

By a regular contributor to this site: Four weeks have dragged by.... A tortuous, arduous month since Daphne's assassination rocked Malta, Europe, and the furthest corners of the globe. I keep pondering why this had to happen, searching for solace, but instead I find myself even more enraged, ravaged, empty. A sea of convoluted thoughts [...]

Mr Kenneth Ciappara, whoever he is, posts on Karol Aquilina’s Facebook wall, and sums up the thinking of the little man in such a stark and erudite manner that it cannot go unremarked. My translation follows. Translation: One would have to admit Mr Aquilina that we the people know that there is all sort of [...]

https://youtu.be/METijTu2IcM

Here's Konrad Mizzi in London on the Instagram account of Charlotte Crosby. I had to google her name because I'm not entirely au fait with English reality TV. While the European Parliament squeals it does not understand how this man is still in office, for him these are truly l-aqwa żmien. Minister Konrad [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: The call for national unity after her death is the ultimate insult. It is another characteristic attempt to plaster over the wounds she worked so hard to reveal, and for which she ended up giving her life. This is not the time to think like bees, circling [...]

My piece in today's L'Espresso. English translation below. The assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta sent shockwaves throughout the world. But not in most of Malta. After a few hours of inane platitudes from the political leaders the country mobilised again along its traditional bipolar lines. In her writings Daphne used to call them [...]

Here's the original English text by Matthew Caruana Galizia translated and published today by L'Espresso. The morning after we buried my mother, when it was still dark, I went to the site of the explosion. A foreign journalist who came to the scene had left a Sakharov Prize notebook hanging from a burned shrub on [...]

Today’s illum publishes a ‘story’ by Saviour Balzan that is presented as exclusive and ground breaking but instead repeats a whitewash that has been known for months. The FIAU ‘found nothing’ when it concluded its investigations into Pilatus Bank. We knew that. Saviour Balzan reports with excitement that he is aware that in September 2016 [...]

So sixth-formers have elected their new students council committee. Most of them have only left secondary school some five months ago. Around half of them have been in high school for a year. They are organised as Labour and Nationalist parties, coded as Pulse and SDM. I’d be a hypocrite if I said I thought [...]

And it will be voting on it Wednesday. It will obviously require at least half of the Parliament's MEPs to vote for it in order to be approved. That's more than double the MEPs within the EPP of which the PN is a member. If this motion is approved, it will signify a massive political [...]

Alfred Sant and Miriam Dalli are leading the charge to limit the undoubted damage expected from Tuesday's European Parliament debate in Strasbourg. The European Parliament is expected to find what we've known for years and Labour kept denying: that rule of law in Malta is ignored by its government and democracy is failing. You can [...]

Financial Services regulator Joe Bannister was a speaker at at least one event organised by Appleby whose records of clients laundering money were revealed by the ICIJ in last week's Paradise Leaks. In April 2013 Joe Bannister was guest speaker at an event organised by Appleby in the Isle of Man. He was introduced as [...]

An advanced copy of the draft resolution that will be debated next week by the European Parliament during a debate on rule of law in Malta shows MEPs are expected to express regret that developments in Malta in recent years have led to serious concerns about the rule of law, democracy and fundamental rights including [...]