However much anyone may be hoping that the Panamagate scandal, which saw one of the country’s top ministers opening up a company in the top secret tax haven of Panama while serving as a minister, will just go away if it is ignored long enough is sadly mistaken.

It is not gone and it is not forgotten, and this open sore will continue to fester until the truth, the whole truth, emerges.

And it should not be too long now until the allegations against Minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff are made concrete. But that whole truth will not come out from any vague tax audit ordered by the minister himself, on himself.

By now, it must be blatantly obvious to the powers that be that the information released to date was no one-off, and that there is much more to follow. They must also know by now that the information concerning Maltese politicians is not the be-all and end-all of the story.

When this newspaper last year broke the SwissLeaks scandal about two secret Swiss bank accounts held by two sitting ministers and that the funds had not been declared in their declarations of assets, it had formed part of a far wider international investigation.

Much in the same way, it can very well be expected that new light will be shed on the alleged tax haven dealings of Energy and Health Minister Konrad Mizzi and the Prime Minister’s chief of staff Keith Schembri, with a cache of data implicating politically exposed people the world over. That data could be published sometime in the very near future. 

Such information may or may not hold more information on the wheelings and dealings of Dr Mizzi and Mr Schembri in tax havens such as Panama and the British Virgin Islands. The revelations so far have also shaken the Office of the Prime Minister, with Dr Mizzi and Mr Schembri being the Prime Minister’s right hand men. On the other hand, if that information is released, it could merely confirm what has been alleged so far, which, truth be told, is bad enough.

Whatever the case, it seems that international law firm Mossack Fonseca is somewhat concerned. The Mossack Fonseca firm has been tied by journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia to the establishment of Dr Mizzi’s and Mr Schembri’s companies in the tax havens of Panama and the British Virgin Islands.

The firm hit the panic button on Friday when it informed many of its clients that the firm has been “subject to an unauthorised breach of our email server”.

The firm explained: “There was unauthorised access to our email server through which certain information was gleaned by outside parties. The identity of certain individuals and information on aspects of their affairs may have been exposed as a result of this unauthorised access. We do not yet know the identity or the motivation of the persons who have committed this act.”

In Mossack and Fonseca’s email to clients, published yesterday by Mrs Caruana Galizia, the firm goes on to add that, “We are continuing our investigation…to determine the full extent of the unauthorised access. We are working to trace all activities of the perpetrators and determine what information they obtained.”

Now there is no doubt, even from the documents published by Dr Mizzi himself, that Mossack Fonseca was involved in the set-up of his Panamanian company. It was also allegedly involved in Mr Schembri’s set-up. It could be that email breach at Mossack Fonseca has something to do with the data due to be released. Should that be the case – and email communications between the firm, renowned for setting up secret companies in offshore regimes, and its clients are released and if Maltese politically-exposed names are included in those emails – the hammer should well and truly fall on anyone complicit.

As for Dr Mizzi, he had been constrained by media reports at the beginning of March to ‘come clean’, at least partially, and admit to the existence of a company he had set up in the secretive tax haven of Panama and a parallel family trust in New Zealand in July 2015, while he was serving as the minister responsible for some of the country’s largest projects such as the new Delimara power station and the privatisation of St Luke’s Gozo General and the Karin Grech Hospitals, among other multi-million euro contracts.

Mr Schembri, however, made no such disclosures but Mrs Caruana Galizia, the original source of the damning Panamagate information, has linked the two, having reported that Dr Mizzi and Mr Schembri had set up similar offshore financial structures at the same time.

Two weeks ago, this newspaper had reported that Dr Mizzi’s Panamanian company and New Zealand trust were both set up on the same day that former Delimara power station consortium partner Gasol had cashed in its shares for tens of millions of euros. Dr Mizzi had then gone into what can kindly be described as hysterics with this newspaper when we requested an interview with him on the subject of new information we had related to his company in Panama.

The government’s upper structures are very clearly in panic mode and much will remain to be seen when, and if, the goods finally come out. There are only so many issues that a government can attempt to pretend away or ignore in the vain hope that they will just go away.

But Panamagate is certainly not one of them.