The big story yesterday was broken by Michael Falzon himself ahead of this newspaper's publication of a story about him today. A journalist from The Malta Independent surprised him with some quite direct questions about whether he had or still has an account at HSBC Geneva and he reacted in a flustered manner, saying that he had forgotten the details and that it was long ago. This kind of reaction was unwise: the only people who genuinely forget the whys and wherefores of a bank account in Switzerland, which contained a large amount of their money, are those who have many such accounts and who have so much money that they can't keep track of it all. Nobody imagines that Mr Falzon is one of those people, so it follows that his initial reaction was to try and bluff things out, until it clicked, at some point later in the week, that perhaps he should follow the time-honoured advice that it is always better to break your own bad news when you know that it's bound to be broken anyway.

Mr Falzon did not know what facts The Malta Independent had about his account. It didn't have any at that point, not even confirmation that he had an account, which is why the newspaper rang round those former ministers in the first place, asking them all the same questions. But working on the basis that the newspaper had several facts, and that is why it contacted him, he then volunteered the information himself in yesterday's press statement, which was supposed to serve as a spoiler for the news story but instead provided the details which the newspaper wanted but hadn't got.

Mr Falzon says that he earned the money - Lm200,000 in the currency of those days - in the 1970s and early 1980s from company work in architecture and civil engineering outside Malta. I must confess that I am struggling with this information. In the 1970s, Mr Falzon was in his 20s. In the early 1980s, he was in his early 30s. That a Maltese architect operating out of Malta (he lived here permanently) could have acquired a surplus of Lm200,000 - not earned, because he would have had to pay his bills and buy somewhere to live along the way, but a surplus, that he could stash away - by the time he was 35 is something I am doing my best to work with, but finding it very difficult. In today's terms, Lm200,000 (about half a million euros) is a great deal of money, but in the context of three decades ago, it is an inordinate amount. In 1985, you could buy a block of three old flats on the Sliema front (prime real estate) for Lm30,000. You could buy a house on the same promenade for Lm20,000. So to put things into the proper perspective, for the amount of cash he had surplus to his requirements at the age of 35, Michael Falzon could have bought 10 houses on Tower Road, Sliema.

But how he came to have so much money at that age, when Malta was a sink-pit of massive unemployment and economic catastrophe, and when he was taken up with campaigning at the forefront of the Nationalist Opposition in some very troubled times, is only one part of it. The really disturbing part is that there is no indication, in Mr Falzon's press statement or anywhere else, that he declared that money to the tax authorities and to his party leader/prime minister when he became a cabinet minister for the first time in 1987, or at any point during the nine years which followed, when he continued to be a cabinet minister. He has said that his financial position has since been regularised, but unless he is categorical as to when he regularised his position, we shall have to assume that for the nine years when he was a cabinet minister, he was sitting on Lm200,000 that were concealed from the tax authorities and, by definition, from his party leader and prime minister Eddie Fenech Adami, to say nothing of the electorate which voted for him. This is completely unacceptable and unforgiveable no matter how low our standards are.

There is yet another aspect to this matter. If the governments of 1987 to 1992 and 1992 to 1996 gave regulated amnesties to those who held undeclared assets outside Malta, for registration or repatriation (I believe they did, but with offices closed yesterday, I was unable to check the details), this means that Mr Falzon discussed and approved, in cabinet, an amnesty from which he stood to benefit himself. This is bad enough, but that his cabinet colleagues would not have known about his hidden assets during any such discussion and decision is so much worse.

Some people have said online that Mr Falzon is a gentleman to have come clean. I hardly think so, though I have never had any occasion to think of him as anything other than a rather nice man before now. But that is hardly the point. Mr Falzon came clean yesterday because he thought this newspaper was going to report all the facts about his account at HSBC Geneva today. He has had that money in Switzerland, he says, since 1985, but he has never felt it imperative to come clean. Was it incumbent on him to do so? Yes, it was. Apart from his obvious legal obligation to inform the tax authorities (his statement yesterday did not say when or how he did this), he was morally obliged to inform his party leader in 1985, and failing that, his prime minister in 1987, his cabinet colleagues when he was a minister, and parliament under the rules for mandatory declaration of assets. As for the electorate - the idea that the electorate have a right to know exactly who and what they are asked to vote for seems to be a truly novel concept in Malta. We are told that the electorate have no right to know about the lives and finances of those who are asking for their vote, and those who get it. How very unusual.