At long last it appears that there will be a holistic inquiry into the revelations provided by the Panama Papers, and all that they revealed about the highly dubious financial machinations that began upon Labour being elected to power in March 2013.

The Malta Independent and The Times of Malta were both media partners with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for the Panama Papers. Our reports lifted the lid on the financial manoeuvres employed by Office of the Prime Minister Chief of Staff Keith Schembri and Minister Konrad Mizzi since practically day one of having taken office.

While the police force had failed to act, those reports, which have been documented well enough by now, were indeed followed up by the country's anti-money laundering institution, the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU), which went through the accusations with a fine tooth comb. The FIAU had in fact come up with some even more surprising findings, findings that investigators felt needed to be passed on to the police for further investigation and possibly prosecution.

Those efforts, for one reason or another, had been stopped dead in their tracks and the findings were never acted upon. The reports have simply been gathering dust on shelves since last year, and the very public accusations have merely been left to fester under the collective national skin for well over a year now. A general election was held, after the Prime Minister himself was accused of involvement, and voters in their majority chose to turn a blind eye to those accusations, but they still linger and question marks hang over the heads of those implicated in the money laundering accusations.

And this is exactly why all those involved - Schembri, Mizzi, the Prime Minister, Schembri's alleged co-conspirators Malcolm Scerri and Adrian Hillman and financial architects Brian Tonna and Karl Cini - should all be welcoming yesterday's news that a magistrate has acceded to the Opposition Leader's request to initiate a criminal investigation into all seven people for having broken money laundering laws.

All have claimed innocence, some more loudly than others. Most have filed court cases against this newspaper over its reportage.

As such, they should all be welcoming any investigation that will, given their claims of innocence, clear their names of criminality once and for all.

The government insists that yesterday's magisterial decision was not to launch a criminal investigation per se but, rather, an in genere inquiry to determine if there is enough proof for a criminal case. But let's not split hairs, if there had been nothing to the most recent court application filed by the Opposition Leader the magistrate would have thrown out the application without any further ado. But he did not.

Any which way one looks at it, the government should welcome the court action all the same instead of making hollow statements to the effect that the Opposition Leader is attempting to derail other parallel investigations into similar and related, yet different, subject matter.

With its attitude, the government has shown itself to be on the defensive when in actual fact it should be welcoming any such investigation with open arms if those involved are as guiltless as they say they are.

These accusations have after all been festering far too long and they hang like a shadow over this government, and as a result large swathes of the population, those who did not vote for this government and even many of those who had, are calling onto question every deal the government strikes and casting doubt on everything it does.

No government should be able to afford that and no government should allow itself to be regarded in such a negative light by any significant portion of its population, irrespective of any electoral result no matter how favourable.