The police commissioner yesterday gave yet another one of his stellar, award-winning performances when cornered by journalists at, and the irony here should not lost on anyone, the inauguration of a new 112 emergency call centre.

The commissioner seemed perplexed about recently reinvigorated calls for his resignation, and equated such calls to only the latest problems to have surfaced with that now-infamous bank in Ta' Xbiex through the arrest in the United States of its chairman, who is facing up to 125 years in the slammer, as they say in the US.

He conveniently seems to have forgotten that notorious incident, about a year ago, when he let the very same Pilatus Bank chairman enter the bank in the dead of night despite the furore that was captivating much of the nation in real time, and leave with who knows what documentation, while he was erstwhile busy at a fenkata in Mgarr. 

He also insisted with journalists that his track record speaks for itself.  Yes, the commissioner's track record does indeed speak for itself: especially in that incident when he allowed that same person to cover his tracks and to make tracks with any evidence that may have been useful to subsequent police investigations and magisterial inquiries, even after the Prime Minister himself requested an inquiry.

The bank was not sealed off until the next morning.

He pointed to the force's record drug hauls and arraignments but, he should know well, this is not the track record that anyone is referring to. They are of course referring to that fateful night, and of course also to the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit reports that landed on his desk and which were quickly put on a shelf to gather dust because they implicated his political masters.

But he still seemed unable to fathom why he is being criticised.

He also said he could not understand why he was being blamed when, he insisted, the arrest of the bank's chairman in the United States had nothing to do with Malta. As a seasoned veteran of the force, the commissioner should know full well that nothing can be ruled out at this stage.

Not only is the cleanliness of the initial capital injected into the bank when it first registered as a company in Malta back in 2013 being called into question, but there was also a very evident overlap of at least four months between when US investigations were being undertaken into the bank's chairman and when the bank was licensed as a banking institution in Malta.

In fact, the US indictment against the bank's chairman leaves the door open as to where the misdeeds were committed.  To quote straight from that indictment: "...up to and including at least in or about May 2014, in the Southern District of New York, Turkey, Switzerland, Iran, and elsewhere, the defendant, others known and unknown...did knowingly transport, transmit, and transfer monetary instruments..."

The key word here is 'elsewhere'.

The Maltese police, however, have gone to lengths to say that stress that the American authorities have assured their Maltese counterparts that there was no Malta connection in this messy Iran sanctions-avoiding business.  But in the same breath, the Maltese police have also said that American investigatory teams will be visiting Malta in the near future to have discussions about the chairman's money laundering case.

One wonders what is going on here.  If there was no connection to Malta as the Maltese police force is saying, then why would US investigatory teams come to Malta at all?

Perhaps the commissioner has invited them to a fenkata.