The financial services sector of the national economy has become, over the years, one very important mainstay of the national economy.

Fostered by the two sides of the country, bolstered by the hard work and expertise of the many practitioners, aided by institutions, regulators and legislators, the financial services sector has proved its worth over time and its growth has now become quite a substantial one.

Over the years, Malta has had to face huge difficulties and obstacles, caused more by perceptions, not to say jealousy by rival jurisdictions who have always found it convenient to depict Malta as a tax haven. In the mid-1990s, on the approach to the EU, Malta switched from being an offshore jurisdiction to an onshore one. Nevertheless Malta continued to be treated with suspicion. In the end it was a hard slog for Malta to get included among the virtuous jurisdictions.

But it was never a cast-iron position of virtue. When an island nation like Cyprus faced its own troubles, there were many both in Europe and outside it who looked at Malta as just another island in the Med without seeing the difference.

In other words, time and again, Malta had to climb up a very hard slope and yet, time and again, it managed to continue growing, to attract financial services to Malta and to build up a huge online gaming industry practically out of nothing.

Now, however, Malta is facing one huge problem. The inclusion of a senior minister, Konrad Mizzi, also deputy leader of the party in government, among the names revealed by the Panama Papers, the only EU minister in the list and the seeming reluctance of the prime minister to sack him, at a time when around us the government of Iceland has fallen and new elections have been called, and when in other countries the issue is being taken very seriously has seriously undermined all the good work done over the past years by the entire industry.

The writing on the wall could not be clearer. Malta is no longer the new baby, the member State with a glorious history and an even glorious weather where people in the European Commission loved to come and visit. One Maltese Commissioner was forced out in national ignominy. One Maltese applicant to the European Court of Justice was rejected, as was the Maltese nomination for the Court of Auditors. That, along with a spell under the Excessive Deficit Procedure, should tell us European patience is wearing thin.

More than the official statements, there is the good name of the country in the corridors of power to consider. It is not just the snide remarks a Maltese in Brussels keeps hearing, but rather what could be coming our way in the future months. If there is going to be a Brexit, if the British were to leave, Malta will be left without a strong ally around the Council table. Without Britain, the huge rollercoaster that is the core of the EU will build a huge bastion around the Eurozone (which Malta fortunately is a part of) and that means, in concrete, laying down a common tax base for the Eurozone, thus doing away with Malta's competitive advantage.

Now much of this cannot be avoided: Malta is at the mercy of events that arte greater than it. But at the very least, Malta can and should act to defend its good name before the wrong perception that Malta is a joke jurisdiction grows any further.

In these times and ages, Malta cannot afford this luxury. No government can afford to have its ministers having trusts and companies abroad after the government's long campaign to get the Maltese to repatriate their foreign investments. Malta cannot afford to have its leaders hobnobbing with the wrong type of persons - the dictators, the international crooks, the unscrupulous people traffickers and all the others whose names appear on the Panama Papers.