In his article of last Sunday entitled “Sorry, Tonio, that was a bad mistake”, Noel Grima wisely counselled Tonio Fenech that before accepting the invitation for a private jet trip to watch a football game with two prominent businessman “he should have remembered, for instance, the flak Alfred Mifsud then chairman of Mid-Med Bank ran into because of the building next to Ruzar Briffa Centre (CRB)”.

I don’t suppose Noel Grima meant to infer that the flak was justified by anything I did or should not have done, as it stands with Tonio Fenech’s case. Given that immediately before Noel Grima stated “it is a question of public perception”, I take it he meant that perception counts as much as reality.

Time is my greatest friend and the wisest counsellor. Eleven years later it is possible to judge whether the negative perceptions so flagrantly whipped up by the PN for cheap political propaganda were justified in fact.

The Centru Ruzar Briffa case is quite unique. It is unique in that it was and still is the only case where a public officer asked the Public Auditor to vet a deal prior to its execution. It is also unique in that it is the only case where the Public Auditor went against the advice of three independent architects he himself appointed and decided against the conclusion that Mid-Med Bank Board had proposed; instead he suggested a solution that was much more risky and expensive. In so doing the Public Auditor went beyond the terms of his remit for investigating whether a deal approved by the Board of a publicly owned organisation met the criteria of financial integrity, and actually usurped the Board’s role in setting the strategy of the organisation for which they are responsible.

What has time decided? It certainly decided that the Public Auditor was an ass in deciding that Mid-Med Bank should not expand its operations at CRB as the Qormi site was not sufficiently prestigious. The successors to Mid-Med Bank, after spending several millions redeveloping CRB on its footprint, finally had to rent out substantial office space and parking facilities in the very same building which the board of Mid-Med Bank had proposed to buy but was blocked by the Public Auditor. Time has decided that other prestigious organisations like Price Waterhouse Coopers moved their operation to the Qormi site even though in the eyes of the Public Auditor it was not prestigious enough for the bank. Time has decided that Bank of Valletta found it convenient to abandon its prestigious offices in Sliema to centralise operations at a site less than one kilometre away from CRB.

Eleven years wiser I still have no doubt that the 1998 decision of the Auditor General was not motivated by good housekeeping practices, but by other factors which served well the PN opposition to push the perception that there was impropriety in the proposed Mid-Med Bank’s acquisition of the building next to CRB.

Yes, perceptions count and their clarification need a long passage of time but by then it might be too late for this world’s rough justice.

Alfred Mifsud