Prime Minister Joseph Muscat today said he has full confidence in the Malta Financial Services Authority Chairman, Joe Bannister, despite another public attack on him this morning by Education Minister Evarist Bartolo.

The minister has been calling for Mr Bannister’s resignation for weeks, claiming that his position is untenable since he is a director of collective investment schemes in the Cayman Islands. Mr Bartolo describes this as a disregard for “generally accepted standards of independence of financial supervisors”.

Replying to questions by The Malta Independent this morning, Dr Muscat said that Mr Bartolo “has a right to express his opinions on certain issues.”

But Dr Muscat said he is seeing that the financial services regulator is working in a correct way. The Prime Minister added that “if there are concerning issues, I will take them up with the regulator personally but, as Prime Minister, my job is to ensure stability in this sector.”

Dr Muscat and Mr Bartolo have been at odds on this matter as well as on the position of Konrad Mizzi. Mr Bartolo has gone publicly on record saying that Dr Mizzi should have resigned in the wake of the Panama Papers scandal, with Dr Muscat keeping Dr Mizzi as minister in the Cabinet reshuffle carried out last Thursday.

TMI also asked Dr Muscat about the BOV leaks published by The Malta Independent on Sunday yesterday, a report that says that BOV is ignoring money laundering and terrorism laws by accepting business from Libyan nationals without carrying out the necessary customer due diligence legally required of financial institutions.

The Prime Minister said that it is the regulator’s job – in this case the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit – to investigate these issues, not his. Dr Muscat said “I am not going to trust a report in a newspaper when I don’t know on what it’s based.”

Dr Muscat added that he has “full confidence in the regulator to check out such issues.”

Asked about former PL secretary general Jason Micallef’s outburst on social media last Saturday, Dr Muscat said that Mr Micallef has a right to express his opinions but that the crowd that turned up at the mass meeting to celebrate 1 May showed that, despite a quite difficult time for the PL, the party is still strong.

Mr Micallef said that the 1 May celebrations this year were being obscured by people who are “untouchable” even when they “pierced a hole in the ship to the detriment of the captain and passengers”.

This post was a clear dig at Minister without portfolio, Dr Konrad Mizzi and the OPM Chief of Staff, Keith Schembri retaining their posts after the Panama Papers scandal showing that the two had secretly opened trusts in New Zealand and companies in Panama.

Dr Muscat was also asked about how he will shoulder responsibility for such actions, after public opinion polls carried out by local media show that there is clear public outrage due to Mr Schembri and Dr Mizzi still working side by side with the Prime Minister in Castille.

The Prime Minister replied that the two-year programme which was announced during Sunday’s mass meeting to further increase transparency means that the government will “deliver far more than it has already delivered.”

In his speech, Dr Muscat took responsibility for where the government has failed the public. “I can tell you that I, and all my friends, are full of energy, and in the coming two years we will make more jobs and make up for the mistakes we have made as we have the people with us."

Regarding a number of PL MPs who did not attend Sunday's meeting, the Prime Minister joked that he “didn’t take attendance” records and left it at that.