Evidence being published by this newspaper today shows that the Prime Minister’s chief of staff must, beyond any shadow of doubt, either resign or be shown the door without any further ado by the Prime Minister.

After that, the Prime Minister must at all costs order an investigation into the possibility that his Chief of Staff has been engaged in either money laundering and/or tax evasion – actions that are both punishable at law.

Moreover, more questions need to be asked of the Prime Minister himself not only of his staunch defence of his Chief of Staff throughout the Panama Papers scandal, but also of the fact that the deeds were perpetrated in 2014 under his watch.

This newspaper, which has become a partner of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and has been granted access to the full set of the Panama Papers, reports how the Office of the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff Keith Schembri had transferred hundreds of thousands of euros to his company in the British Virgin Islands in 2014 when serving as chief of staff and in the same year that his Maltese holding company declared losses of hundreds of thousands of euros.

Should the Prime Minister fail to take action and continue to inexplicably defend Mr Schembri over his companies in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and possibly Gibraltar as has been alleged this week, he could very easily be accused of a very serious dereliction of duty.

Not only that, but inaction on his part for the umpteenth time would be an umpteenth slap in the face of the nation, given the public outcry he has been faced with for weeks on end now.

Indeed, since his chief of staff was first implicated in the Panama Papers the Prime Minister has continually been slapping the nation in the face. He should have cut his chief of staff loose on the first whiff of corruption, instead of stolidly standing by his man through thick and thin, and through hell and high water.

With each passing day and with each fresh Panamagate revelation, accusation and allegation, the fact that both his Panama Papers-embroiled minister Konrad Mizzi and his chief of staff continue to sit in office as though it is business as usual has become more and more unacceptable.

What is equally unacceptable is the fact that the Prime Minister, to date, has not ordered any kind of investigation into the affair, and in the process, and in his utter defence of Mr Schembri, he has thrown every basic concept of good governance out the window.

Matters have now degenerated to such an extent that the government’s attitude and approach to the damning revelations over his people’s international financial machinations has become nothing less than a glaring national insult.

The Prime Minister clearly lacks the mettle to do what he needs to do. His minister, Konrad Mizzi and his chief of staff, Keith Schembri, despite their sporadic reactions to press reports, have failed to provide a decent and proper explanation to the accusations they are facing. Blanket denials will no longer suffice given the situation.

Nor will token Cabinet reshuffles suffice, not even in the slightest, anymore.

As for Dr Mizzi, the country cannot be expected to await the results of audits being performed on Dr Mizzi’s affairs, audits that, truth be told, will never be able to ascertain with any degree of certainty what the real situation is.  How long is the nation expected to wait for these audit results? How long can the Prime Minister continue to defend Mr Schembri because, as the Prime Minister argues, the man was successful in business before being carried over the threshold of Castille by the Prime Minister in March 2013?

This now goes well beyond the realms of an innocuous or ‘naïve’ as the Prime Minister put it, opening of companies in tax havens while in office, which was the initial excuse at the outset of the scandal.

New information coming to light thanks to the leaks of the Panama Papers has shed a whole new light on those initial allegations, and they have also showed how Mr Schembri in particular has been having a laugh at the media’s and the nation’s expense. This sentiment is particularly pertinent after the revelations being carried in today’s issue.

Any self-respecting Prime Minister should have forced them both to clear their desks, but for some reason very little action has been taken with respect to Dr Mizzi, and no action whatsoever has been taken with regard to Mr Schembri – an unelected individual who is helping the Prime Minister run the country.

This attitude, however, is pretty much par for the course for the current administration and one is beginning to expect no better despite its lofty pre-electoral pledges of transparency and accountability.

There is still much work to be done on the Panama Papers, and more revelations to come, now that this newspaper and another have access to the full set of the leaks that have taken the world by storm. More will undoubtedly come of the leaks and the Prime Minister would be well-advised to take action before it is too late to save his own skin. Although, truth be told, it may already be a little too late for that.