The Inland Revenue Department has apparently given up hounding the Maltese to pay their taxes and is keeping itself busy with filing bids on eBay for old Maltese coins.

And the Central Bank, equally dissatisfied with its current work, kept itself busy over the Christmas period by organising New Year’s Eve parties.

Obviously, the above are not true of the respective department or bank.

But someone at both organisations was busy doing precisely that on the employer’s time and hardware.

A bidder, who identified himself as ird.gov.mt placed repeated bids on eBay, the auction Internet site, for a Knights of Malta La Valette silver 4 Tari coin.

The same user also bid for a mid-19th century English silver large samovar.

And he or she also bid for an early 19th century Italian piece.

According to a reader of The Malta Independent on Sunday, another frequent eBay bidder, the same person using the ird.gov.mt name could also be the person behind mwaa777 and marsa007. In another instance, a flyer was received by this paper advertising a New Year’s Eve party on a Central Bank e-mail address, complete with the official warning, which in the circumstances is very ironic: “This message from the Central Bank of Malta is sent in good faith but shall not be binding nor construed as constituting a commitment by the Bank except where provided for in a written agreement or any other agreed manner.

“The contents are not to be disclosed to anyone other than the addressee. Unauthorised recipients must preserve this confidentiality and should advise the sender immediately of any error in transmission and destroy this message.”