Slowly, inexorably, the noose is getting tighter.

This is not Malta as we know it. It is the world as we do not know it.

Just as whoever planned Daphne Caruana Galizia’s murder did not take into consideration the triangulation of mobile signals, so too many who have been dabbling in illicit jurisdictions do not seem to have factored in the immense advances that science has made in uncovering fraud, money laundering, and the funding of terrorism.

People were shocked last week to find out that US authorities, following an investigation that must have taken years, finally arrested the chairman of the Pilatus Bank on charges relating to money that funded the construction of apartment buildings in Venezuela.

Although the investigation did not mention Malta at all, the link between Ali Sadr and his bank in Malta drew attention to the bank, already at the centre of so many allegations in Malta over the past years.

There is now an FBI mission coming to Malta in this regard. The European Banking Authority is carrying out a preliminary investigation in Malta and the ECB has been asked to investigate Pilatus Bank.

What people may not be aware of are the close contacts between anti-fraud authorities of different jurisdictions.

The situation in Europe may not be as tight as it should be but, fortunately, there is America, which does not suffer from the European malady of split jurisdictions, petty sovereign independence and conflicting authorities.

Take the very recent case of Latvia, with banks taking in huge deposits from Russian citizens. The Latvian authorities were unable to see what was happening under their noses, but not the Americans, who found out that the third Latvian bank had been involved in exports to North Korea. The Americans then, as they did again in the case of the owner of Pilatus Bank, did not suffer from any reverential fear when they disclosed what they knew about this bank.

By extension, what the Americans revealed about the bank reflected badly on the level of oversight by the Latvian authorities. There was a parallel case of the governor of the Latvian central bank, who was accused of corruption and suspended.

The main thing was that the authorities in Latvia reacted and took steps. This is what makes Latvia different from Malta, for here we get spin and more spin and no steps at all being taken, but on the contrary, a huge defensive wall put up to cover anything and everything.

This will only make things harder for us. Just as the Americans say, the GIs always get their man.

This is not the only case involving US interests in Malta. There was a case, revealed by this paper’s sister Sunday paper some years ago, of US citizens’ savings intended for Bermuda mysteriously finding their way to Malta.

And there was a case of other savings gone astray.

The problem in Malta is we have created these huge authorities and bodies with people paid fairly high salaries but their level of supervision seems quite tame, to say the least.

We cannot expect to remain untouched when these allegations repeatedly surface. We cannot expect there to be no fall-out.

At least, in this case anyway, this is no allegation trumped up by the evil PN MEPs in Brussels who want to harm Malta’s reputation.