When he was speaking on the Adjournment last Wednesday night, former minister Manuel Mallia spoke, like the experienced criminal lawyer he is, on FIAU, the body set up to combat money laundering.

Mallia went into detail to prove that nobody outside the Unit is authorized to see the FIAU documents, let alone reveal them. Handling them, let alone disseminating them, is a criminal offence.

Predictably, this being Malta in 2017 when many try to replace the late lamented Daphne Caruana Galizia, no sooner than Mallia had his say that two papers ran the FIAU document on the Pilatus Bank and an MEP even sent it to the European Commission.

There are some very cogent reasons why the law protects the confidentiality of the FIAU. First of all, the main and normal interlocutors of the unit are the comparable anti-money-laundering units in different countries.

Secondly, even within FIAU there are various levels of confidentiality, that even its own board has no right to be informed about the different dossiers that the unit is investigating.

Thirdly, FIAU can only propose to the police to investigate this or that but then it is up to the police, and the Attorney General to establish if there are enough grounds for prosecution. As we can remember from other legislatures, there are times when the AG decides ‘Nolle prosequi’ (do not take any further steps).

As Mallia pointed out, infraction of these confidentiality rules constitute criminal offences that can be punished with fines and even prison terms. Realistically speaking, however, no government would want to turn a paper or an MEP into a victim, especially in these dramatic times after Daphne’s murder.

That can mean, however, that the FIAU door is wide open and what should be a unit working in confidentiality, becomes the talking point of the whole country. Finance Minister Edward Scicluna had even suggested, some time back, that some of the reports themselves seem to have been written to be divulgated.

The divulgation of the FIAU files has been taken as proof that the police and the AG are huge obstacles to the investigation of money laundering since no prosecution has followed from the FIAU investigations. But as Mallia pointed out, it is only the police and the AG who can decide whether to prosecute on the basis of the conclusions reached by FIAU.

It is perhaps a sad comment on the state Malta is at present that saying something is confidential is like waving a red flag to a bull.

On the other hand, however, the absence of any sort of prosecution and the fact that key persons mentioned in Panama Papers and other leaks continue in their jobs and, in one case at least, are shown living it up with no care on their minds, the frustration the country feels at this state of affairs – all militate in favour of more disclosures and for a general perception that people in the wrong will go unpunished.

Criminal actions or not, the flow of disclosures seem destined to continue.