In the middle of a long attempt to bring some order to a study overflowing with paper I came across the issue of The Malta Independent on Sunday (TMIS) for 15 March 2015. The front page as well as a number of inside pages brought to mind that well-known exchange between Julius Caesar and the soothsayer in Shakespeare's  play.

Caesar: The Ides of March are come.

Soothsayer: Aye Caesar but not gone.

Indeed they have not gone even now, just changed dramatis personae and geographical locations. 

The front page carried a collage showing four “senators” under examination for alleged business dealings detrimental to the purse of the Republic. An (incontinent?) soothsayer by the name of Leaky Swiss and two of his associates – International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and the newspaper from Lutetia  calling itself Le Monde, had supplied TMIS with information on the wheeling and dealing of these “senators”,  as well as on shady activities by  former ministers of the Republic. Unlike today's “senators” the “famous four” had no difficulty in setting up bank accounts in Switzerland, with good references from established bankers a cut above the likes of Mossack Fonseca and Nexia BT.

Joint bank accounts (run on the basis of “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers”); a state milch cow called MOBYDICK; a front company – Island Blundering – with “silent partners”; offshore companies registered in Panama, one of them called Moloch (the god associated with child sacrifice, you may recall); banking with HSBC Switzerland.

A valiant attempt by TMIS to interview one of the senators met a fierce repulse by the lawyer of the said senator on  the  grounds that Leaky Swiss had committed a criminal act and so his soothsaying will not stand up to scrutiny. TMIS 'retired hurt' and empty-handed, even if the soothsaying did indeed stand up to much scrutiny.

Then in the inside pages there was more on the same theme. Noel Grima under “Compare and Contrast” expressed first surprise and then scepticism  at PM Muscat's  rapid reaction, mainly directed at the non-Swiss case of  Anthony Debono, the husband of Giovanna Debono MP but glossing over Swiss actions of  former PN Ministers Ninu Zammit and Michael Falzon. Grima noted the rapid police action in the Debono case and the absence of such action in the other cases – a course of (in)action we have now grown familiar with. In fact although somewhere else in the March 15 edition PM Muscat was reported to have contacted President Francois Hollande for access to the Leaky Swiss papers (clearly thinking that Hollande has the same bad habits as himself), nothing seems to have come of this.

There were plenty of other happenings still echoing “down the arches of the years”. George Farrugia had just been taken off the police bail list; the Malta Gaming Authority was faced with Italian  accusations  of facilitating the massive Poker Stars fraud by lax oversight; the Identity Malta CEO, pictured with a broad grin on his face, was telling us that the IIP required no real residence period for obtaining a Passport.  (That brought back visions of then-Commissioner Vivian Redding trumpeting the Commission's good sense in imposing a residence period).

And inevitably a few “discontinuities” : Dr. Simon Busuttil was attending an “obesity” conference (not on 'fat cats' though);  Archbishop Scicluna was  not into 'kitchen comments' yet, being still a week away from his formal installation; Daphne Caruana Galizia was exercised by the behaviour of hunters who had attacked a 'No' Referendum rally “fronted by the peaceable and media-friendly Mark Sultana, instead of the irascible, hysterical and widely off-putting Saviour Balzan”; not sure this last bit was “discontinuous”.  

E.A. Mallia.

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