Look up Crane

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2021-03-29T13:45:45+02:00Mon, 29th Mar '21, 13:40|

Given the evidence the police presented against Keith Schembri on the imbroglio at Progress Press, it would be irresponsible for the police and other institutions like the National Audit Office not to look deep into what happened with Crane Currency. It’s not that Keith Schembri’s fingerprints were discovered on that deal. He’s its acknowledged meister. [...]

Does Robert Abela think we work for him?

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2021-03-29T11:58:30+02:00Mon, 29th Mar '21, 11:58|

At a speech yesterday Robert Abela said he ordered the termination of the contract Justyne Caruana secured for her “friend” Daniel Bogdanovic as soon as news of the contract emerged in the media. This reminds me of one of Robert Abela’s first acts: ordering the termination of the contract the tourism authority gave Konrad Mizzi [...]

PODCAST: Choosing between injustices

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2021-03-29T13:59:13+02:00Mon, 29th Mar '21, 11:21|

Manuel Delia · Choosing Between Injustices This country needs to learn the truth and the only reliable sources are a bunch of amoral liars. Alfred and George Degiorgio were people one would turn to if one needed someone killed. Vince Muscat was someone killers or bank robbers turned to when they needed a grunt. Melvyn [...]

GUEST POST: Bob’s your uncle

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2021-03-29T09:10:09+02:00Mon, 29th Mar '21, 09:08|

Photo: Mark Zammit Cordina / Times of Malta When that affront to politics and politicians Joseph Muscat returned to Malta to set up his so-called “movement” a friend of mine quipped “the only good movement is a bowel movement”. He was right. Joseph Muscat did not set up a movement. He set up [...]

THE SUNDAY TIMES: There’s so much more

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2021-03-28T10:43:58+02:00Sun, 28th Mar '21, 10:43|

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "In June 2018, I reported on my website that Schembri received over $430,000 in payments in January 2015 from unexplained sources. Documentation held by Pace’s firm does not include any traces of the provenance of these funds, nor that any verification has been made of their provenance [...]

Gaming industry laments “loss of business, impact on reputation” because of corruption and collusion

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2021-03-27T09:36:08+01:00Sat, 27th Mar '21, 09:36|

Major gaming industry players published a statement today “stressing the need for clear and decisive action to ensure that justice is done and any guilty parties are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.” They were commenting on “events, accusations and criminal charges being levied in Malta” over the past few years, and in [...]

Heart of Gold

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2021-03-27T08:13:13+01:00Sat, 27th Mar '21, 08:13|

Ian Castaldi Paris thinks it’s unfair that a Facebook post he wrote two years ago giving a metaphorical public blow job to Keith Schembri is being circulated again now, as if he had just written it. He doesn’t get it, does he? Two years ago, he wrote that post to defend his beloved Keith Schembri [...]

How they took the old lady

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2021-03-26T16:54:55+01:00Fri, 26th Mar '21, 16:54|

We’ve known Keith Schembri and Adrian Hillman had a scam going. We’ve known it for over 4 years now. But today the police explained what the scam was. The then chairman of the company that owns The Times Vince Buhagiar, and Keith Schembri’s business partner Malcolm Scerri were also in on it. We finally understand [...]

You’re free to disagree

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2021-03-26T15:31:57+01:00Fri, 26th Mar '21, 13:53|

I apologise upfront for insisting on speaking on my home turf. I do not enter into debates on Facebook. The ganging up, the shouting matches replete with whataboutisms, non sequiturs, straw men and twisted logic remind me of the school yard. Which I avoided as a child and which I will avoid now. I did [...]

GUEST POST: A Call for Civil Peace

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2021-03-26T09:14:28+01:00Fri, 26th Mar '21, 09:14|

The present evidenced dysfunctional democracy has led to a dysfunctional society. The prognosis of the islands’ maladies overlaps from the functionality of government onto the people. In an absence of a credible alternative, citizens opted to conform with the regime in exchange for mass consumerism that some describe a trickling economy. All in the name [...]

Not kickbacks. Not nothing either.

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2021-03-25T19:06:07+01:00Thu, 25th Mar '21, 19:06|

In his effort to keep Labour on side, Keith Schembri announced hours before his arrest that a magisterial inquiry found no proof that payments he received from Brian Tonna at Pilatus Bank amounted to kickbacks on the back of the sale of passports. Today the police testified in court that the magistrate had not found [...]

This website is currently under attack

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2021-03-25T18:33:57+01:00Thu, 25th Mar '21, 18:33|

The software that tries to protect this website when it is attacked has just raised a yellow alert. Truth Be Told is currently being bombarded with a denial of service (DDOS) attack. The assault is increasing exponentially and at any time I fully expect to be taken off-line. In the meantime, visitors to the website [...]

GUEST POST: Keep your eyes on the ball

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2021-03-25T18:07:25+01:00Thu, 25th Mar '21, 18:07|

It is no exaggeration to say that the most important cases pending in court at this time, by many miles, are those relating to the brutal assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. So much so that it doesn’t really need saying, except for the fact that it does. Follow my thinking here. The trigger-men, one of [...]

GUEST POST: Reflections

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2021-03-25T18:00:13+01:00Thu, 25th Mar '21, 18:00|

Today a friend told me he was in a particularly funny mood - he sent me a meme of our ex university classmate on his daily jog with a caption ‘Me on my way to Dingli to save 300 year old carob trees and ODZ land’. I replied with a tearful emoji. We exchanged another [...]

Off. Then on again.

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2021-03-25T17:41:41+01:00Thu, 25th Mar '21, 17:41|

  From testimony heard in court this morning we learnt that after his arrest earlier this month, Brian Tonna was stripped of his warrant to practice his profession as an accountant. The warrant is governed by the accountancy board. The board is appointed by the government. The fact that with all that was in the [...]

Not cleaning up the act. Edwina Licari still “general counsel” at MFSA.

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2021-03-25T17:17:50+01:00Thu, 25th Mar '21, 17:17|

There was Alex Agius Saliba today, haranguing the European Parliament for daring to criticise Malta for pervasive corruption. He told MEPs how “proud” he was. Ugh, that pointless verb used by the useless when describing their pointless role in something they have no influence on whatsoever. He was proud, he said, of the achievements of [...]

Impressions of that debate

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2021-03-25T16:44:45+01:00Thu, 25th Mar '21, 16:36|

If you don’t feel shame watching MEPs queue in single file to indict Malta for supporting a government with blood on its hands, you have lost all residual belonging to this country. I’m not necessarily criticising you. I’m just telling you I haven’t caught up with you yet. And if I feel the shame, I [...]

#dimplechin

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2021-03-25T13:56:26+01:00Thu, 25th Mar '21, 13:56|

It's tougher for women in politics. It's a man's world. Men persist in objectifying women. They judge them by appearance instead of the quality of their work. They speak about their looks, ranking them in ways that would relegate your average balding, pot-bellied hirsute oaf to oblivion. Women in politics have to push against the [...]

The Żeppi l-Ħafi method

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2021-03-25T12:10:45+01:00Thu, 25th Mar '21, 12:10|

The Labour Party has already managed once before to protect and free a person charged for being a criminal mastermind on the back of compelling evidence that he ordered the assassination and political murder of someone he wanted out of the way. It was the attempted assassination of one of Keith Schembri’s predecessors, Richard Cachia [...]

Maria l-Maws’ survival strategy

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2021-03-25T11:12:15+01:00Thu, 25th Mar '21, 11:12|

About a year ago, Evarist Bartolo was skewered by Tim Sebastian. Watch it again like a delicious rerun of one of the later episodes of Breaking Bad. At that interview Evarist Bartolo admitted (not that he could avoid to) that between 2013 and 2019 he belonged to a corrupt government. That, as the interviewer put [...]

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