Ai Weiwei, the internationally acclaimed Chinese artist and outspoken critic of China’s leaders, was arrested by Chinese police in 2011.

For several weeks nobody had seen or heard from him and despite enquiries not even his family knew where he was. He remained in custody for 81 days and subsequently his passport was confiscated and was not allowed to travel outside China. When he was asked why the Chinese authorities had taken these steps his reply was “I have no idea why”.

Charles Cronin, the former head of the FIAU’s Compliance Section was summarily dismissed with no reason given (The Sunday Times 9th July 2017). Kenneth Farrugia, the new Director of the FIAU and who had previously worked at the Office of the Prime Minister’s internal audit and investigations department called Cronin out of the blue and terminated his contract without explanation. According to Cronin the director made it clear that the FIAU leaks were not the reason for his sacking. There had been no concerns raised about Cronin’s performance at his sixmonth review. So why sack him? The director of the FIAU gave Cronin no explanation. The opposition has not been given an explanation. The public has not been given an explanation.

One thing is certain - Cronin is experienced and professional. He has previously been senior policy adviser to the Jersey Financial Services Commission and was involved in the design and development of Jersey’s financial regulatory regime and regulatory policy. He was also a financial analyst and advisor in financial markets regulation in London. Why get rid of somebody of this calibre without any reason? Especially when the FIAU is facing a crisis and needs people of calibre to maintain its credibility?

With Cronin, former police inspector Jonathan Ferris was also summarily dismissed. Ferris only moved to FIAU in November 2016. Prior to that he was Chief of the Economic Crimes Unit and had raided Mary Swan’s Sliema flat - the same Mary Swan who was together with John Dalli linked to the development of a Ponzi scheme that robbed elderly Christian Americans of their life savings. The same Americans reported Mary Swan to the Malta police as well as to the FBI with evidence that large sums of money were transferred to an HSBC bank in St Julian’s which was held by John Dalli’s company Corporate Group Ltd.

Jonathan Ferris also investigated accountant Joe Sammut, former Labour party treasurer and candidate, for money laundering and fraud. Entire volumes of documents were seized from Mr Sammut’s office by Jonathan Ferris’s team. At the time the Labour party ex candidate had accused the police officers of “hindering foreign direct investment in Malta” - familiar tactic. If your money laundering is about to be exposed, throw in some accusations - hindering foreign investment, enemy of the state, traitors, liars.

More importantly the same Jonathan Ferris had investigated the Egrant whistleblower. Undoubtedly he knows much more about the Russian citizen entangled in the Egrant saga than most. Having had significant experience dealing with such characters as Mary Swan and Joe Sammut, Mr Ferris is likely to have significant insight into the veracity of the claims being made by the Russian.

Mr Cronin clearly stated that at his 6 month review no concerns were raised about his performance. As far as can be ascertained the same applies to Ferris - which leads us to believe that these two gentlemen were doing their job well. So the obvious question that arises is in whose interest is it to sack two members of the anti money laundering unit who are doing their job well? Yes - money launderers. Anyone’s guess who those money launderers might be. But one thing is sure - whoever they are they certainly are powerful.

Now it really does look bad when the sacking happens only 3 days after the Finance Minister no less asks whether the FIAU reports were “written to be leaked”. What is truly remarkable is that the purge at the FIAU of those doing their work well happened so swiftly after the minister’s attack - yet there is apparent inaction over the contents of those same reports. Is it not surprising that in the face of such incredible claims of money laundering and kickbacks at the highest level the response of the Prime Minister and his party is so muted? Have we seen any shock or outrage on the part of the Labour party at the contents of these reports? None at all. It felt as though the information was not new, that it was almost expected or known about.

But if failure to be shocked by the revelations was shocking in itself, what was truly outrageous was the open and public denouncement by the Minister of Finance. And worse still the immediate action to expel those doing their job at the FIAU. But Minister Scicluna did not stop there - he made things even worse by writing to the PANA committee to inform them that the termination of employment of the FIAU officials was “according to law”. How disingenuous. Of course the question that the PANA committee asked, and which every sensible Maltese citizen is asking, was what is the real reason for sacking these two officials? More importantly who ordered their sacking? Was this a personal initiative of the director of the FIAU? or was the Director of the FIAU put under pressure, whether direct or indirect, to sack these individuals? If so who applied the pressure? Or was it a direct order? If so who issued that order?

Like Ai Weiwei, Cronin’s answer as to why the institution had taken such drastic action against him was “I have no idea why”. Weeks after the sackings the Maltese public also has no idea why. Unfortunately it is becoming increasingly clear that we have now entered not merely a phase of disrespect and disdain towards the public but upon a faceless phase in which no one is responsible - and this can only end in one way. Badly.