You need to rebuild confidence. Now.

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2018-10-24T10:38:12+02:00Wed, 24th Oct '18, 10:38|

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 [...]

Blessed Owen!

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2018-10-24T10:21:02+02:00Wed, 24th Oct '18, 10:21|

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 [...]

Satabank: “This is causing amazing damage to Malta’s reputation” – UK financial advisor

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2018-10-24T09:57:21+02:00Wed, 24th Oct '18, 09:57|

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 [...]

Eppur si muove

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2018-10-24T09:34:44+02:00Wed, 24th Oct '18, 09:15|

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 [...]

Hey Joe Brincat … looks like it will be some time before you admire the Great Siege Memorial again

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2018-10-23T14:37:05+02:00Tue, 23rd Oct '18, 14:37|

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 [...]

Mistaken identity

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2018-10-23T13:54:02+02:00Tue, 23rd Oct '18, 13:54|

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

Daphne Caruana Galizia awarded Transparency International Anti-Corruption Award

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2018-10-23T11:43:31+02:00Tue, 23rd Oct '18, 11:43|

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 [...]

They give the Nobel Prize. We sell Passports.

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2018-10-23T11:31:45+02:00Tue, 23rd Oct '18, 09:52|

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 [...]

Expats in the gaming industry worst hit by Satabank shutdown

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2018-10-23T09:27:04+02:00Tue, 23rd Oct '18, 09:27|

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 [...]

The State that ignores its own

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2018-10-22T18:16:42+02:00Mon, 22nd Oct '18, 18:16|

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 [...]

Satabank: And how I let them bully me into silence.

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2018-10-22T17:47:22+02:00Mon, 22nd Oct '18, 17:38|

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 [...]

Journalism most foul, he said.

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2018-10-22T17:42:36+02:00Mon, 22nd Oct '18, 17:14|

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 [...]

Tactical marriage

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2018-10-22T16:51:54+02:00Mon, 22nd Oct '18, 16:51|

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 [...]

‘Professor Joseph Mifsud’: will he ever show up?

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2018-10-22T16:39:22+02:00Mon, 22nd Oct '18, 16:39|

For a while, there was a suggestion he might be dead. But then his Swiss lawyer said he's very much alive but in hiding. Stephan Roh told me as much when he offered to obtain answers to my questions to Joseph Mifsud in exchange of an agreement to testify for his character. Of course, I [...]

BBC: From our own correspondent. John Sweeney.

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2018-10-22T18:34:10+02:00Sun, 21st Oct '18, 09:18|

This is the script of John Sweeney's From Our Own Correspondent feature on the BBC after he participated in Tuesday's March for Truth and Justice. A crowd of seven thousand or so stood in silence in the main street in the capital Valetta, holding their phones up with flashlights on, a very twenty-first-century tribute in [...]

Cold feet

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2018-10-21T09:00:26+02:00Sun, 21st Oct '18, 09:00|

They tried it out on One TV but in Saviour Balzan they find a willing ally. So the eyewitness who told the camera of France 2 he had seen Chris Cardona speak to Alfred Degiorgio before the latter’s arrest has since told the Police he had lied about it. When do you know that a [...]

The alibi that stayed in bed

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2018-10-20T17:37:40+02:00Sat, 20th Oct '18, 17:32|

Labour needs to hold its domestic audience together. The stories about Chris Cardona on France 2 from last April are starting to penetrate One TV audiences only now it seems that they have been confirmed again with additional facts by La Repubblica a few days ago. It appears Labour could largely ignore the April reports [...]

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