It all started, as we all remember, with just three people: Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and Joseph Muscat - the trinity around the Panama Papers allegations.

Now the list is getting longer and longer and the cast will soon not fit the national stage.

Waiting in the wings and first out on stage was Brian Tonna, the accountant who, when not running seminars in the lobby of the Westin Dragonara, reportedly had an office at the Auberge de Castille itself, the seat of the Executive, when he was not also visiting once or more a week the Pilatus Bank office in Pieta.

Then on came the Attorney General. Appointed before the 2013 elections, that is by the Nationalist Government, when his predecessor became Chief Justice, the AG, the most senior legal advisor of the government, is the one who decides who is to be arraigned and who is to be charged in court. Despite all the allegations against Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi, even for what is known and accepted as having a secret account in the flawed jurisdiction that is Panama, none of these two has been arraigned and charged yet.

Following hot on the heels of the AG, comes the Police Commissioner who in the very short time he has been Commissioner has had the country falling about in tears when it was found he went to a fenkata when duty should have led him to the Pilatus Bank.

The stage is getting rather crowded at this point, but surely space can be found for the Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit, the latest weapon the country created to combat financial crime. The previous head, Manfred Galdes, resigned (and is now being attacked as being Daphne Caruana Galizia's source for many of her revelations). The chairman of the FIAU is the Attorney General, and among the members of the board there is Deputy Police Commissioner Silvio Valletta, who heads the Economic Crimes Unit and is married to Parliamentary Secretary Justyne Caruana.

There are other bit players but let us stop here. What may have looked like a scandal involving two or three persons now looks like a multi-headed Hydra, almost the entire top levels of regulators of our precious financial services sector, a system of inter-locked personalities all defending each other and protecting each other's backs.

A case of institutional incest - according to law as it is exercised in Malta, the Inquiring Magistrate conducts an inquiry into suspicions of money laundering by Mr X and at the end sends a process verbal to the AG with possible recommendations for criminal action to be taken vs Mr X.

But the same AG is the chairman of the FIAU which has already investigated Mr X and recommended criminal action vs the same Mr X for money laundering.

But months have passed and the same AG did not ask for an investigative order in connection with money laundering vs Mr X.

And now that he has received the process verbal from the inquiring Magistrate he has discretion whether to ask Police to file criminal action vs Mr X when he has done nothing vs Mr X after the FIAU (which he chairs) report.

It should be obvious to all that this tangled skein cannot be solved by an election that replaces the resident of Castille with another one. The clean-up of Malta and of its reputation entails much much more.