This paper, as readers can attest, tries hard to provide information and news on business in Malta without entering the labyrinth of Maltese partisan politics.

Nevertheless, there are sometimes issues that cannot be allowed to pass without this paper making its opinion known.

A case in point is the revelation, now accepted as real, that the Minister for Health and Energy has opened a trust in New Zealand which owns a property registered in Panama.

While whole reams of newsprint, and entire hours of radio and television have been spent on the issue and the matter has become the talking point of the entire nation, which has been split between those who believe Minister Konrad Mizzi is guilty and those who would absolve him from any charge, the core issue has so far failed to be appropriately addressed.

Let us put away for the time being the provenance of the funds invested in New Zealand and/or Panama, whether they come from honest travail or not.

The fact remains that a Minister of State, and newly-elected Deputy Leader of the party in government has openly acknowledged he has opened a trust outside Malta which in turn owns a company in yet another country outside Malta.

There is no doubt that Dr Mizzi is not the only Maltese to have done so or is doing so. It may also be that there may have been, or that there are, other ministers who have done so.

The fact is however that this was not revealed by Dr Mizzi in the appropriate time and place but was revealed in the media and only then Dr Mizzi admitted to it.

The fact is that the entire strategy employed by successive governments has been to dissuade Maltese from investing outside Malta and to get those who nevertheless did invest outside Malta to repatriate their funds. This has caused successive minister of finance to issue repatriation schemes precisely to attract back to the Maltese shores funds invested elsewhere.

Now the minister's bad example punches a huge hole in this strategy. One can only imagine what the Minister of Finance must be feeling. He and his predecessors did their best to try and persuade Maltese investors to invest in Malta and here comes a top minister coolly admitting he did the opposite. The Minister of Finance has not shared what he must be feeling. Nor has the Central Bank, MFSA, InvestinMalta, and any other institution that handles funds and that would want to attract investment to Malta, usually so voluble, spoken what they must feel, and thus remove any doubt that they do not believe what they declare as their main raisons d'etre.

It is sorry to say this of such a young, energetic, minister who willingly took on two ministries that each could have bent the back of any other minister, who has shown so much promise.

But using the slogan he so furiously shouted in Parliament (with regards to the Leader of the Opposition) that he was 'not fit for purpose' and turning it in his direction, it is more than clear that Dr Mizzi is 'not fir for purpose'. His has been a 'conduct unbecoming' and he should not form part of the Cabinet of this country.