The Prime Minister’s chief of staff and his favoured cabinet minister both issued statements today, once more protesting their innocence in the aftermath of an article published yesterday morning on the other side of the world, in Australia’s Financial Review. That article took Malta by storm and within a couple of hours of people waking up in Malta (it was published while we were sleeping, given the time difference), it shot to the top of the list of most-read article on the newspaper’s site.

For the first time, chief of staff Keith Schembri felt under pressure to break the near-blanket silence he has maintained since the story first broke back in February. He released a long and tangled statement late in the day, lashing out at the journalist who wrote the piece and at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for conspiring with the Australian journalist to bring him down (because that really makes sense). He released the emailed questions which the journalist, Neil Chenoweth, sent to him – thereby proving that he was given ample opportunity to state his case before publication, but thought he could simply brush off Australian journalists in the way that he and his government colleagues brush off Maltese journalists.  

Health and Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi was briefer, sticking to his point that he has always told the truth (yes, of course you have, sir). And while protesting against the revelations and lashing out at the journalist who wrote it – behaviour which they both consider normal in a democracy, despite the fact that neither of them has seen David Cameron, for example, going after the many journalists who are writing about him now – at the same time they seek to use those revelations as some kind of “proof” that what they were doing was normal and legal and that it has nothing to do with corruption.

Because in their weird, corrupted world they believe it is entirely normal for a cabinet minister in a European Union member state, working in collusion with his Prime Minister’s chief of staff, to engage professionals to set up secret companies in Panama for them, sheltered by locked-down trusts in New Zealand, everything hidden by nominee directors and whispered conversations on Skype about a third, mysterious involved person, then get those professionals to chase around the shadier parts of the world – from Dubai, to Panama to various Caribbean islands -  for a bank that would have them as clients. Oh, and they consider it entirely normal, too, for that cabinet minister and prime minister’s chief of staff to first state their business to the banks as management consultancy and brokerage, and when this is not accepted, to switch to saying that the companies are going to hold shares in remote gaming businesses and in recycling operations in various countries, including Dubai and India. Normal, my eye – nobody thinks it’s normal. People, unless they are spectacularly oblivious to what this signifies, are deeply shocked. Or just plain disillusioned, depending on whether they had faith in those scoundrels or not.

But hang on, they don’t think it’s normal either. That’s why they worked so hard to keep it secret. “See, there is no evidence of corruption; there is only legitimate business,” Schembri yelled through his press statement. He cannot possibly be serious. Aside from the fact that, in his position as the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, he is not permitted to conduct business and that is exactly why he made a vain show of resigning his company directorships, there is nothing legitimate about remote gaming and obscure recycling operations conducted through a secret company in Panama. Those two lines of business are, in fact, the preferred money-laundering choices of organised crime networks. I do not suggest, here, that Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi are laundering money for organised crime through pseudo-recycling and remote game. What I do say, however, is that in picking a cover for the real nature of their Panama companies, they couldn’t have made a worse choice than the two preferred laundering operations of the ‘Ndrangeta and the Mafia.

Their determination to hang on in there, with the Prime Minister’s backing, has simply led all right-thinking people to conclude that they reason they refuse to go is because it would cut off their revenue stream.

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